


In Fair Verona

by skyline



Series: Violent Delights Have Violent Ends [1]
Category: Big Time Rush
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Gender Issues, Homophobia, M/M, Public executions, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet AU, hawaiian shirts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:18:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 76,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What are we doing?" Kendall asks, taking a shaky breath. His hands hover over James's abdomen, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall's fingertips press into his skin. "I don't know. But don't stop."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thunder Love Has Struck Us Again

**Author's Note:**

> Right off the bat, I have to give major thanks to jblostfan16 for being my ever gracious beta and cheerleader and listening to me go OH MY GOD WHAT IF EVERYONE THINKS I'M PSYCHOTIC FOR WRITING THIS, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT KENDALL AND JAMES WEARING HAWAIIAN SHIRTS IN A DYSTOPIAN FUTURE AND CARRYING GUNS, and to breila-rose for cheerleading and letting me text her every five seconds about this story (particularly James polishing his sword), and goten0040 for indirectly inspiring me with her fic So Here I Go Breaking All The Rules, in which Carlos was accidentally Mercutio. HE WAS, LIZ. 
> 
> This was mostly inspired by my stopping through Verona, Italy (among other places) last October. I'm not such a fan of Romeo and Juliet (shockgaspawe), but I love all things starcrossed lovers, and I love Leonardo DiCaprio's entire being in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. This is very much inspired by that, but if you've ever read anything by me, you'll know when I say inspired, I very much mean INSPIRED, and not BASED ON. I'm hoping this ends up being a very different creature. For instance, SPOILER: NO ONE WILL BE KILLING THEMSELVES. I'm not saying no one's going to die, but I don't do suicide. Ever. There will be a decent amount of minor character death in this (mostly people I created), and because it is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, there's going to be major character death at points too. I'm warning for that right now. 
> 
> The end pairing in this story is Kendall/James. There is a bit of Kendall/Mercedes to get there, and likely James/ofcs, and I don't even know what else. Camille/Logan? We'll see. This is (obviously) totally AU, and it's kind of my baby right now. So idek, be kind.

"And you’re from…?”  
  
The sun hits his face, too bright and awkward angles. Kendall squints and tries to keep his cocksure smile from slipping. Helpfully, he supplies, “Minnesota, sir.”  
  
He’s trying for confident and casual. But beneath the surface of the big oak desk, Kendall’s fingers tap nervously against his knee, energy and fear fighting for dominance.  
  
If he flunks this interview, he’s all out of options.  
  
“And how are people in _Minnesota_?” The man sitting across from him is wearing a red suit, the precise color of blood. It’s almost funny, because a good portion of Verona was built using Arthur Griffin’s blood money. Even before the Fall, he was a rich, powerful man. Now, he is _the_ most rich, powerful man on the western seaboard. The streets are paved with the skeletons of people who dared defy his will.  
  
“As far as I’m aware? Dead, sir,” Kendall tries to keep his voice clear of anything like emotion. Getting all weepy eyed will kill his chances at this job. He needs this. Badly.  
  
There’s a stuffed raccoon sitting on the broad surface of the desk. It looks pissed, and Kendall’s not sure if that’s on purpose or if it’s an experiment in taxidermy gone terribly wrong. He tries to avoid the dead thing’s gaze, but Griffin’s is not much better. Griffin’s eyes narrow. “Your family?”  
  
This is it. This is a test. Kendall can’t choke. He swallows and says levelly, “Gone.”  
  
Kendall watches as Griffin brightens and jots something down on the gilded leather notebook in front of him, humming to himself. After a beat, he says, “Splendid. I like a man with no attachments. Means you’ll have a flexible schedule.”  
  
Kendall will not punch his future boss. He _will not_. He reminds himself how much he needs this job. Things are getting bad in Verona. The riots are happening more frequently. Public executions occur every day. He needs the protection employment with Griffin will afford him.  
  
Kendall is pissed, but that’s nothing new. He has spent most of his life angry with the whole wide world.  
  
“Why are you interested in security? What makes you think you’ve got the chops?” Griffin’s lips smack together. He’s old. His skin is thin. But he does not look frail.  
  
Kendall has no trouble at all believing that Griffin could destroy him with a word.  
  
“I’ve survived on my own all this time, haven’t I?” Kendall puts just the right amount of challenge into the question, just enough reckless confidence that it sounds impressive.  
  
Griffin doesn’t know that Kendall hasn’t ever done anything on his own. God willing, he’ll never find out.  
  
“You’ll be working with Gustavo Rocque. He runs the studios on the beach. The equipment costs more than your life is worth, and Gustavo’s more of a hassle than his life is worth too. But the people want music.” Griffin shrugs. “They’ll get it. For now.”  
  
Kendall nods. It sounds like easy work.  
  
It sounds like he’s _hired_.  
  
He’s saving his victory dance, though, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
“Gustavo’s got talent, loathe as I am to admit it. Your only job is to keep him happy and alive.”  
  
“I can do that.”  
  
Probably. Kendall can’t imagine why someone would want to kill a fat cat record producer on Griffin’s payroll when there’s fifty more just like him down the street. Music is the foundation on which Verona was built.  
  
“Goody.” Griffin couldn’t make the word sound more blasé if he tried. “You start tomorrow. Rocque Records. Nine o’clock. Oh, and, Knight?”  
  
Kendall’s in the process of standing, ready to get the fuck out of the big, spacious, slightly creepy office as quickly as humanly possible. But the edge on Griffin’s words makes him pause. “Yeah?”  
  
“I don’t like failure. I’d recommend you get very, very good at your job, very fast.”  
  
Kendall swallows. He’s got no backup plan; this is it. This is the way he’s going to live out the rest of his life. “Understood.”  
  
The interview’s over. Griffin tells him where to report in the morning and then mumbles something about cold pants, which Kendall takes as his cue to leave. He steps out into the sunlight, wincing under the harsh glare of it.  
  
The pavement is cracked and unsteady beneath his feet. Heat rises off it in waves. Even the houses don’t cast shadows, like the dark is scared to defy the ever-present sun.  
  
This is his city.  
  
Verona; fair as a summer breeze.  
  
That’s what they say, anyway. Mostly Kendall thinks it’s miserably hot, and the only thing the rare breeze carries is the stench of sea salt and dead fish. But it’s home, and it isn’t like he’s got another one.  
  
When Los Angeles was hit, it was hit hard. Nearly ten million people gone in an instant. Survivors were few and far between, and mostly consisted of people like Griffin, who was vacationing in Bora Bora at the time. There were a lot of people who thought California wouldn’t bounce back from the strike.  
  
They were sorely mistaken. In Hollywood, people always thought they were the center of the world. Just because the apocalypse came and went, they were supposed to roll over and play dead? Become irrelevant? Not likely. Arthur Griffin and men like him stepped up. Verona, formally a quaint beach hotspot known by another name, was created to assuage the vanity of the entertainment industry; all those wealthy souls who were convinced the world could not go on without them. But it was also created for music.  
  
Even at the end of the world, people want to fold themselves inside notes and lyrics. Verona is about recapturing that feeling, about losing and finding, about inspiration and hope. It’s a city of dreams. At least that’s how they spin it in the pamphlets they hand out to refugees.  
  
Kendall doesn’t buy any of that. Music doesn’t make the world go ‘round. But he can admit it’s the epicenter of Verona.  
  
There’s only one long range radio station on the entire west coast, jury-rigged from the government’s emergency broadcast signal, which has been flatlining the airwaves for close to fifteen years. Griffin owns it. Well. Not technically, but if the government minds that Griffin’s pirating their EBS, they haven’t said anything. He runs a good business, and for all intents and purposes, it’s made him a god amongst mortal men. Griffin also owns the blocks of Verona closest to the coast, while George Hawk stands guard at the outskirts, his _employees_ more like a militant blockade, controlling who comes and goes.  
  
Hawk controls half the city. His men are everywhere. He and Griffin don’t like each other much, but they have an understanding, and that understanding keeps the city from chaos.  
  
And, of course, the music. No one outside the starry-eyed refugees expects it to change the way everything has gone to shit. But the constant flow of new musicians on Griffin’s pirated-broadcast gives Verona something to focus on. People still need to be entertained, and the influx of ever changing songs and artists make the world feel almost like normal.  
  
If you don’t take a good look at the world.  
  
A woman pushing a cart over the fractured pavement brings a cacophony of creaky wheels and rattling metal along with her. She grins a toothless grin at Kendall, who ignores her. As a general rule, he doesn’t smile at strangers.  
  
Kindness doesn’t get anyone anywhere.  
  
On the corner, beneath a faded green road sign, there’s a guy chain smoking. He’s got this whole James Dean thing going on in a tight white v-neck stained with age and even tighter black jeans.  
  
Kendall walks up to him, and now he does smile. This wannabe desperado is not a stranger.  
  
“That took _forever_ ,” James draws out the word. He takes a drag off his cigarette and throws it to the ground. The embers smolder against asphalt.  
  
“Miss me?”  
  
“You wish.” James snorts. “I just spent an hour watching clouds and avoiding the handsy bag lady over there.”  
  
The woman with the shopping cart smiles and winks. James pouts. “I want to go to L’amour.”  
  
Of course. James is bored out of his blessed little mind, and no one’s informed him that it’s not actually Kendall’s job to entertain him. Kendall actually has a real job now, working for Griffin, which he tells James.  
  
Who doesn’t even have the decency to look impressed. “Duh.”  
  
“Duh? That’s all you have to say to me? _Duh_?” Kendall gapes.  
  
James shrugs. “I knew you’d get the job. But congrats anyway. We’ll be living the high life now. My buddy, working for Arthur Griffin.”  
  
James slings an arm around Kendall’s neck, guiding him forward. He’s making a beeline for L’amour, the billiards bar right up on the beach where everyone they know wastes away the day.  
  
When they turn the corner, Kendall’s steps falter, but only for a beat.  
  
There’s a man hanging in the middle of the boulevard, strung up from a streetlight. His bloated body sways in that barely-there, fair Verona breeze. The birds have already been at him, and there are gaping wounds where his flesh served as carrion, including a chunk of his purple lips. There’s a piece of rainbow fabric tucked into the belt loop of his ratty jeans.  
  
James is fearless. His lip curls when he sees the corpse, and there is a flash of something dark in his eyes. Then it passes. He salutes the body like it can actually appreciate the gesture, and then he draws his sword. James nicked the thing from the museum of medieval whatever that lays in ruins on the outskirts of LA. He has no idea what to do with it, but he spends a lot of time polishing it and admiring his own reflection in the cold steel. Now he uses the pointy edge to lift the rainbow cloth from the dead man’s pocket, twirling it in the air once before it floats down to the ground.  
  
James makes sure to stomp on it as they walk past, his laughter carrying on the wind.  
  
Kendall looks away.  
  
They say in Verona you can taste the creativity in the air, the sweetness and the tang of it on your tongue. Sometimes all Kendall can taste is death.  
  
They walk to L’amour, a ramshackle building with stained siding and red accents, splintered wood and peeling paint. By the door is a poster, the edges curling. The words stand out in bold letters.  
  
 _Do your civic duty. Repopulate._  
  
It’s a slogan that all of them know by heart, perpetuated by the Reproduction Initiative, known in common vernacular as the Copulation Counsel, or CC. It’s the reason that man, that _dead_ man met his end. The human race has to keep on going, and he wasn’t doing his part.  
  
That’s probably what it said on the execution notice, anyway. Kendall swallows back bile. He stumbles forward, trying to get away from the sunlight and the smog and the constant reminder that Big Brother is always watching.  
  
Inside, he bumps into the hard planes of James’s back, skidding to a halt in front of an enclosed window just past the doorframe. There is a man sitting with his feet propped up on a rickety plywood desk. He’s busy reading an ancient issue of Playboy, faded curves and pale peeks of flesh, a surprise around every corner. Without even looking up from his magazine, the man jabs a finger toward the brassy plaque closest to the door, the one that every single patron of L’amour tries to ignore.  
  
 _Check your gun at the door._  
  
Kendall sighs.  
  
Carrying a gun isn’t a prerequisite. It’s just smart. Kendall is so used to his weapon’s constant presence throughout the day that taking it off always feels like dismembering himself. Still, he fumbles with the straps of his holster, trying to shrug the thing off his shoulders. James’s hands stop him, deftly fingering open the buckle by Kendall’s armpit like he’s got ages of practice helping people undress.  
  
Which, he’s James, so he probably does.  
  
He sets Kendall’s gun, holster and all, on the counter and then pulls his own from the holster hidden beneath his jacket. He slams that and his sword down next to Kendall’s. The man at the desk lifts his gaze to the gleaming metal, neglecting some bunny’s tits long enough for skepticism and a touch of grudging respect to flit across his face.  
  
James grins.  
  
“Always making an entrance, you two,” Carlos calls from the bar. His skin is crusted with sea salt, steeped through with sunlight so that he practically glows golden. “Did you get the job?”  
  
“Of course he got the job,” James answers for Kendall, pulling him into his side. “Was there any doubt?”  
  
“Never,” Carlos replies, tilting his glass towards them. He’s halfway to drunk, or maybe halfway to sober; it’s hard to tell. He obviously split most of his day between the bar and the beach, because he can. He doesn’t go to work until well past nightfall, and it’s not like he needs to be on the straight and narrow to do it. Carlos’s job is to dance.  
  
Naked, usually.  
  
Female strip clubs went the way of the dinosaurs when the Reproduction Initiative clicked into place. The general idea is that a person can’t raise a child when they’re dancing for cash. That’s where the drag cabarets come into play; dress up a twink in a wig and turn the lighting down real low. Let a man’s imagination do the rest.  
  
The places are regulated real strict-like; there are time limits and rules about touching and there are constant inspectors weeding out the _imaginative_ patrons from the ones who are actually interested in the real thing. Carlos says that’s actually an added bonus for the CC. They weed out men endangering the future of the human race, the sodomizers and the homos and the fairy boys who end up hanging from the wrong end of a rope. Kendall just thinks it’s dangerous. What if the CC decides that the dancers are encouraging it, somehow? But the gig shells out more than what Logan or James makes in a month, and it rivals Kendall’s new paycheck in number.  
  
Besides, if there’s one thing Carlos enjoys more than corndogs, it’s shaking his hips to a beat.  
  
“I see you’ve been productive today,” Kendall nods the line of shot glasses near Carlos’s elbow. Halfway to drunk, then.  
  
“Not much else to do.” Carlos shrugs, and he’s right. There aren’t a lot of people around in the middle of the day.  
  
There’s the man at the desk and the bartender, Lucy, who’s deep in conversation with a grifter from the east side of town. There’s Logan, who’s matching off with two tattooed dudes over the billiards table. His opponents obviously have no idea what they’re in for. Logan is a shark at pool. He hits three balls in at once, all geometric angles and careful science. One of his opponents says a foul word and accuses him of cheating. A fly buzzes past Kendall’s face and he swats at it idly, watching the game.  
  
“Don’t even think about joining,” James says, following his gaze.  
  
Carlos agrees, “Remember what happened last time?”  
  
Kendall does remember; the satisfying crunch of wood and bone and the look on the face of that asshole that tried to gyp him out of his winnings. That’s why they let Logan handle the gambling now.  
  
Kendall smiles placatingly and says, “Don’t worry, mom, dad. I’ll figure out another way to stay entertained.”  
  
James asks which one of them gets to be mom, bickering with Carlos about titles while Kendall sizes up the rest of the crowd. His eyes land on a couple of skeleton-girls swaying lethargically to the music, this tinny, metallic song buzzing out from a beat up jukebox. When their eyes flash towards Kendall, he doesn’t see anything but pupil, huge and black. One of them bares their teeth, a mean, feral gesture, and her lips are a bloated purple-blue, like that dead man.  
  
Kendall stumbles back into James, surprised.  
  
“You okay?” James asks, a steadying hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Fine. I’m fine.”  
  
Now that he’s looking, really looking, he can see her mouth is just berry stained.  
  
It’s not that Kendall is scared of death, exactly. It’s just that what happened in Minnesota was a tragedy, and there were a lot of empty roads between there and California. Kendall has seen enough of bones and dust and death. And now he feels like it’s followed him.  
  
James’s breath is hot on his ear as he says, “I’m going to get some shine.”  
  
He might as well have said _sit, stay, behave_ for the edge in his words. Kendall rolls his eyes skyward and saunters over to the pool table, Carlos at his heels. Kendall isn’t going to play, but James will take forever over at the bar, chatting up Lucy, the tough-as-nails ‘tender.  
  
Lucy never caves to James’s advances, but he never stops trying, either. It’s simultaneously admirable and skeezy.  
  
Logan’s wearing a pair of jeans and his empty gun holster and probably about eighty layers of sun screen, knowing him. He lifts a hand in greeting and says, “I’m almost done thrashing these guys.”  
  
One of the guys flips Logan off, but he doesn’t even notice, too busy lining up a shot. He’s going to win. Logan always wins.  
  
He calls a pocket.  
  
The fly buzzes.  
  
Carlos says, “Really, man. I knew you were going to get the job.”  
  
“Yeah? How?”  
  
“You’ve never let me down before,” Carlos says solemnly. Kendall dreads the day that stops being true. He changes the subject, asks how the cabaret is. Carlos starts going on about some client who may or may not have been checking out his real junk as opposed to the fake push up bra he dons for his act, and Kendall zones out.  
  
There’s a girl perched on one of the end tables by the blacked out window, arguing with Camille.  
  
She’s obviously insane.  
  
Camille looks completely innocuous in a flower print sundress and combat boots. It’s misleading. Every time Camille shifts her legs, Kendall can see a flash of black high on her thigh; her gun holster. The actual weapon is at the door, checked, just like everyone else’s, but that doesn’t actually mean much. Camille works for Hawk, hunting down refugees who get into the city without papers. It’s a thankless job, but it gets her the kind of notoriety she likes, the kind where she’s got a gun and most of the self-entitled dickwads that prowl Verona in search of tail leave her alone.  
  
She’s bad news.  
  
She’s also the reason that Kendall and the guys made it into Verona when the rest of Hawk’s men wanted to turn them away. She saw something in them- to this day Kendall will never know what- and went to bat on their behalf. That was two years ago, when they were sixteen and even stupider than they are now, and Logan and James both fell head over feet in love with this pretty girl with her wild eyes.  
  
Kendall has never had that problem. He loves Camille like a sister, and he’s every bit as scared of her as he was with his real sister, before Katie…well. But the girl involved in the argument is obviously not scared, which means she’s probably got a death wish.  
  
Definitely crazy.  
  
Definitely cute.  
  
She’s wearing this little white dress, all silky and flowy and hugging all of her curves. When she smiles, it dimples, making her look like she’s up for anything. Kendall likes girls like her, wild and carefree, like they don’t even know the city is a battleground; they’re a catastrophe waiting to happen. And Kendall has never, ever been able to resist that kind of temptation.  
  
Logan wins his game right about when James appears at Kendall’s elbow with his chastising expression and a couple of drinks in tow. Logan snatches up one of the glasses of shine, downing it before Kendall or James can object. He takes in the both of them with his big brown eyes, still sharp from focusing on the game, and then he says, “Look at that girl. Gorgeous and psychotic.”  
  
He raises his eyebrows at Kendall like maybe he knows Kendall’s been checking her out all along.  
  
“Aren’t they all?” James muses. He would know. He likes his girls flawed, enigmatic on the surface and all cracked underneath. Kendall is the same; they both are constantly walking into relationships that they know are going to destroy them, but they do it anyway.  
  
James takes a sip from his glass. Kendall supposes that means he’s out a drink. Oh well.  
  
“Maybe you should step in, Romeo,” James nudges Kendall with an elbow. “Save her from Camille.”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Kendall replies immediately.  
  
“Go on, ask her to dance.” James grins.  
  
“You don’t want her?”  
  
“Of course he does,” Carlos supplies, leaning into James’s side. “But he also wants you to stop moping about Jo.”  
  
Kendall’s eyes narrow. “That true?”  
  
“Hey. Your girlfriend joined a convent. Not you.” James grins his wicked grin and adds, “Live a little.”  
  
Kendall thinks about saying no, but James doesn’t know how to resign himself to anything. He’s a fighter.  
  
It’s part of what Kendall loves best about him. So Kendall caves. He approaches the end table just as the conversation falls quiet. Possibly on his account.  
  
“Kendall,” Camille greets with an edge in her voice. She’s glaring daggers at the girl, who brightens when Kendall draws near.  
  
“Hi,” she says, lazy confidence and a hint of amusement coloring her tone.  
  
“Hi,” Kendall says, and for a beat there is this awkward moment that he lets stretch on for far too long, nervous beneath the pretty gaze of this pretty girl. Camille glances back and forth between them, her expression bouncing from curiosity to realization to annoyance in seconds flat.  
  
“Oh for-“ Camille throws her hands up in the air, muttering curses under her breath. “Kendall, meet Mercedes. Mercedes, meet Kendall.”  
  
“Mercedes. That’s a beautiful name.”  
  
Camille makes a gagging noise.  
  
“Do you wanna dance?” Kendall interrupts, ignoring the outraged look on Camille’s face.  
  
Mercedes shrugs. “Sure.”  
  
She follows him out onto the sawdust dance floor, far from the bone-girls and their demon eyes. Kendall glances towards his friends, but Logan and Carlos are occupied by another game of pool, and James is flirting with a redhead, freckles and fire and sky blue eyes. He’s got that predatory look that means he thinks he’s going to get some, and when the girl laughs coyly and stares up at James like he’s a young god on earth, Kendall knows that certainty isn’t invalid.  
  
Girls in Verona treat James like he exists to save them from this shithole, and he in turn treats them the way he’s treated girls his whole life; as vestibules for his own pleasure.  
  
“Thanks for the save.” Mercedes says, interrupting his thoughts.  
  
“The what?” Kendall plays stupid.  
  
“You think I don’t see you trying to save me from that?” She jerks a finger towards Camille.  
  
“She’s opinionated,” Kendall allows, and he feels an immediate flush of guilt for even wording it that way. It’s not like he doesn’t agree one hundred percent with all of Camille’s strong-willed ideals. He’s just learned to be careful with saying so in public.  
  
But.  
  
That doesn’t really give him an excuse to sound like Camille is a wayward puppy that he tolerates, even when she pees on the rug. She’s one of his best friends in the whole world.  
  
“She’s wrong, is what she is,” Mercedes retorts. Kendall’s mouth drops open, and he’s prepared to argue on Camille’s behalf, to defend whatever cause she’s championing this week. But Mercedes continues, “Obviously the surfing is better on the north end of town.”  
  
Kendall’s mouth drops open for real. “Surfing? That’s what you guys were arguing about?”  
  
“What did you think, we were having a discourse on women’s rights? Duh,” Mercedes rolls her eyes and flings her arms around Kendall’s neck. “You’re lucky you’re cute, because you’re not very bright. Or that good of a dancer. Fortunately, I’ve got a thing for white knights.”  
  
“Oh yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. But don’t overstep your boundaries.” Mercedes grins, flirting. “I can take care of myself.”  
  
“You don’t have a gun,” Kendall points out.  
  
“I don’t need one,” she rejoins, and okay, that is _hot_. Kendall swallows, wondering what kind of tricks this girl has hidden in her pretty blonde head.  
  
She pulls a flask from her cleavage.  
  
“Is that shine?” Kendall asks.  
  
“Vodka,” Mercedes wiggles her eyebrows.  
  
Kendall wrinkles his nose, “Like from potatoes?”  
  
“Like from a legit distillery. I’ve got connections. Want to try?”  
  
Of course Kendall does.  
  
James approaches after three songs, two more glasses of shine balanced carefully in his hands. He introduces himself to Mercedes with none of his usual charm, and Kendall figures that’s for his sake; James doesn’t want to steal her away. But then Mercedes says, “Oh yeah, we’ve met.”  
  
Kendall blinks. “You have?”  
  
“He came by the studios last week, looking for a job. I work there,” she adds hastily, almost guiltily. Then she rushes on to say, “Gustavo turned him down flat.”  
  
James makes a face. “It wasn’t that bad.”  
  
“Yeah it was.” Mercedes looks him over, critical. “It’s a shame. You’ve got a nice voice.”  
  
James perks up. “You think?”  
  
“Too bad you’re not my type. I like my boys a little more…fiery.”  
  
Kendall completely ignores the way Mercedes pinches his cheek, something hot and sickly in his throat. “You went to the studios? To Rocque Records? And you didn’t tell me?”  
  
He doesn’t like how irritable his voice sounds, but all the liquor is making his heart feel too big and raw in his chest, blowing everything out of proportion. Mercedes laughs and mumbles something about a lover’s spat, but James can read Kendall like a book.  
  
Quietly he says, “It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t get the gig.”  
  
“But why did you try in the first place?”  
  
“I just wanted to help out.”  
  
“You do help out. All the time. And you should have told me.”  
  
It’s not that he’s upset, exactly. It’s just that it bothers him when James keeps secrets, and it feels important for James to know that.  
  
Secrets are _annoying_ , is all.  
  
“Hey, hey, hey.” James squeezes Kendall’s shoulder, eyes going all soft and fond. “Cheer up. You’ve got a new job and you’re dancing with a beautiful girl. You shouldn’t be worried about what I do with my time.”  
  
The thing is, Kendall always worries about James and Carlos and Logan and Camille. They’re the only family he has left, and if they’re keeping secrets, how is he supposed to protect them? How is he supposed to make sure that they’re safe? Kendall almost asks as much, but Mercedes shoves his shoulder and says, “Pretty boy, you are being such a buzzkill right now. What kind of party is this?”  
  
“Not much of one,” James concedes, forcing a grin. He drops his hand back to his side and passes Kendall the moonshine. James spins his own glass between his fingers, letting it sparkle in the dim light before he downs the thing in one long gulp.  
  
Mercedes cheers. She tells Kendall, “Right, so wipe that melancholy look off your face and let’s _drink_.”  
  
That actually sounds like a great idea.  
  
Things go a little hazy after Mercedes pulls out her second hidden flask. Kendall’s present breaks into a kaleidoscope, into James dancing with the redheaded skank, Carlos laughing too loud, _too loud_. Into Mercedes pressing her body against Kendall’s, and he can feel the softness of her curves, the heat of her through that tiny sundress. “Play your cards right, and I might give you a private tour of my bedroom.”  
  
“Is that a promise?” He breathes heavy.  
  
“It’s a helpful suggestion,” Mercedes replies, winking. She snatches the flask of vodka from Kendall’s fingers, taking a liberal sip.  
  
The next thing Kendall knows she’s gone, and he is running, racing James down side streets far from L’amour, from the safety of the dimly lit bar and the hollow echo of laughter. He can’t quite figure out what’s happened, or how much he’s had to drink, or what time it is. The sky is that eerie combination of low hanging clouds and late dusk that makes it look electric blue and all aglow. Their footsteps reverberate down the empty streets, and James is fast, faster than Kendall could ever dream of being. It’s like the wind pushes him along, like he has wings that curve soft in the fading light.  
  
“Too slow,” James yells, breathless, and Kendall speeds to a sprint, his energy already running low. They break into a clearing, or no, it’s the beach, and then Kendall catches his foot on the last rotten step of the boardwalk. He falls headfirst into James. They tumble onto the beach in a dog pile of laughter and curses.  
  
For a second, Kendall lays there, content with the thrum of James’s racing heartbeat under his fingers. James is grinning, sand in his hair, and the reflection of the last shreds of sunset in James’s eyes is blinding, gold orange like a burning star.  
  
“First one down to the water,” Kendall dares, and James rolls Kendall off of him so that Kendall ends up with a mouthful of sand and an image of James’s ass as he dashes off down the beach. They make it to the water, kicking off their boots and shedding their shirts, whooping into the empty air.  
  
It’s early evening, but not many people brave the beaches at night, when the city shows her meaner side, and Kendall can hear the laughter behind him, can hear Mercedes and Camille cheering him on while Logan and Carlos egg on James.  
  
Oh, he thinks. That’s where they got off to.  
  
Kendall does not beat James into the water, but when he walks out, soaking wet and shivering cold, Mercedes is there, pulling him into a hug and murmuring, “My hero.”  
  
She still wears the sun's last gasp in her hair, golden across her skin. Kendall is intoxicated with her, the way she smells, the way she laughs, and the brilliant way she smiles. He’s still not sure what the race was about, vodka burning in his bloodstream, but obviously it had something to do with this beautiful, crazy girl.  
  
He glances over at James, who has a girl of his own wrapped around him. Not the redhead, but a dark haired beauty with tiger eyes, kajol thick in her lashes. He mumbles something in her ear and she smiles, which makes James smile, bright and fierce.  
  
Kendall swallows and looks back at Mercedes.  
  
She kisses him then, and her lips taste like sunshine, like vodka, like sea salt and Verona. When she pulls back she tells him to follow her, and Kendall does; he walks in her footsteps until the boardwalk and the beach are memories. Until even James, who wears nightfall on his shoulders- carved of shadows and starlight- is a distant thought.  
  
The city is beautiful. The city is ruined. Mercedes is a combination of both. Their feet stir dust and litter, the remnants of old repopulation flyers and other bits of decay. They reach a house that must be hers, and it’s gigantic, bigger than anything that Kendall has ever seen in his life.  
  
“What _the fuck_ do you do at Rocque Records?” Kendall demands, his awe making him noisy. Or maybe that’s the liquor, a burning supernova in his blood.  
  
“Shhh.” Mercedes laughs. “We have to be quiet.”  
  
“I am being _quieeet_ ,” Kendall replies, kissing soft across her neck. The arc of it is distracting, swan-like, beautiful.   
  
She nips at his ear, pushes him away. “You’re really not.”  
  
Mercedes slaps him on the ass, shoving him towards decorative lattice work. “Climb.”  
  
Kendall blinks, stares up. There is a balcony the size of the entire crashpad he shares with the guys looming highhigh _high_ above.  
  
“You want me up there?” Kendall frowns at the balcony. “That’s…far.”  
  
“The sacrifices we make for love,” Mercedes teases, already halfway up the rungs. And this is not love; they’ve barely known each other for five minutes, and even Kendall cannot fall that hard or fast. But as soon as Mercedes reaches the balcony, something lacy and white floats down and lands on Kendall’s shoulder.  
  
It takes him a full minute to realize that it’s her underwear.  
  
Kendall fumbles his way up in seconds flat, until he’s falling into what has to be Mercedes’s bedroom, snow white with flashes of color peeking out at him from every nook and cranny. Mercedes laughs. “You’re eager. I like that.”  
  
She’s aggressive, jostling him back onto the snowy expanse of her bed, and Kendall crashes down, down until he’s drowning in a sea of white silk, trying to find his way back out to catch one more glimpse of her gorgeous dimples.  
  



	2. All Roads Lead To Somewhere Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gustavo rolls his eyes heavenward. “Don’t get attached to my guard dog.”
> 
> “Don’t call him a dog,” Kelly retorts. “He’s a human being.”
> 
> “He’s a dog.” Gustavo emphasizes. “Don’t come crying to me when he gets put down.”

Their crashpad is a tiny two story house made of red brick and cement, an industrial wreck squeezed between what used to be two large, shiny office buildings. To get there, Kendall has to walk through a side entrance off the street, down a dark little alley, and through a wrought iron fence surrounded by weeds.  
  
The house has got a balcony that’s mostly useless; it looks out on the second floor of the nearest L-shaped building, an abandoned state job that now sits empty, shattered glass and deserted desks. James keeps this potted palm up there. It barely gets any sun, but somehow it still grows, little by little.  
  
James’s own tiny miracle.  
  
They’ve been squatting in the building for close to six months, ever since their last home got repossessed by the city. Kendall walks in like he owns the place, although technically, if Griffin or, god forbid, Hawk came along and kicked them out, they’d have no choice but to go.  
  
But that won’t happen. Not now. Not when things are finally starting to look up.  
  
Kendall races up the stairs until he hits the second floor. He can’t find anyone in their pigsty of a living room, or the bedroom they all share, so he heads out to the balcony. Outside, the wall is discolored, peeling paint and water stains. The railing is coated in rust that flakes off orange on his hands. Kendall ignores that, climbing up onto the shifty metal, his balance precarious. He sways a bit until he gets a good grip on the edge of the roof. Then he swings his weight up and over.  
  
Crawling out on the brick shingles is dangerous, but it’s also the only way to get to the one decent lookout spot around. The six story office buildings hide them from prying eyes, but they also make it hard to see if anyone’s trying to sneak a peek. On the roof, at least, the guys can sight the street down the alley. It’s the only way in or out.  
  
It’s where Kendall knows James will be.  
  
Sure enough, James is reclining on the roof, smoking a cigarette and staring at the early morning clouds. When he sees Kendall, his eyes narrow, and he crosses his arms. “Where have you been?”  
  
“Out,” Kendall replies.  
  
“Out where?”  
  
“Where do you think? With Mercedes.”  
  
There’s this tightness in James’s expression, and Kendall gets instantly that he was worried. _Of course_ he was worried. What was Kendall even thinking? “Dude, it’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t freak.”  
  
“Because it’s that easy,” James snorts. Kendall settles down next to him, careful of broken shingles. He bumps their shoulders together, trying for solidarity. It doesn’t really work. James bristles and asks, “Good night?”  
  
“Now why would you think that?” Kendall smirks.  
  
“You’re humming. It’s obnoxious.”  
  
“I don’t see what that has to-“  
  
“You only hum when you get laid.”  
  
Kendall’s flush is immediate. “That’s not true.”  
  
“Yeah.” James puffs his cigarette and frowns out at what they can see of the city, which isn’t much at all. “It is.”  
  
Well. Kendall tangles their legs together. The sunlight feels nice, like it’s warming his insides. “Got a smoke?”  
  
James shifts, digging out a pack from his pocket. Cigarettes are a rare commodity, these days, but he’s got all these sources on the border that he refuses to name.  
  
Mostly to piss Kendall off, but it’s cool. James always shares.  
  
He lights Kendall up, and then, after Kendall’s slow inhale _exhale_ , he leans in close. Too close. So close that James’s breath mists against Kendall’s lips, making them feel damp when he presses them together. “You have to be more careful.”  
  
“Get out of my face.” Kendall flicks his cigarette ash on James’s jeans, playing around.  
  
James scoots to the left, like there’s a cord tugging him back, away from Kendall, like maybe he’s dodging an oncoming blow. Kendall has this sudden urge to reach out and grab at him, to pull him forward, and it’s ridiculous. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He opens his mouth, maybe to apologize, but then  James makes the same prissy face he’s been making since before Kendall can remember, since they were kids back in Minnesota, playing with light sabers and ready to own the whole wide world. He brushes the ash off his jeans and mutters something rude.  
  
Kendall laughs. “I didn’t mean to- I figured you knew. That I was going with her. At the beach…”  
  
James shrugs. “I was occupied.”  
  
Kendall thinks of the girl with her kohl eyes and her octopus arms, pulling James into her. Yeah. He was _busy_.  
  
“Did _you_ have a good night?”  
  
James declines to comment.  
  
After a beat, Kendall starts unbuttoning the shirt he wore to the interview with Griffin, until the edges of it are hanging open against his chest. He basks in the sunlight like an animal, like it can seep into his skin. He yawns, and James’s expression softens. “It’s early, still. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”  
  
It _is_ early, barely past dawn. Mercedes kicked Kendall straight out of bed the second light touched the horizon, warning that her dad was not a man Kendall wanted to tangle with. Kendall isn’t interested in meeting anyone’s father, so he quickly agreed.  
  
That kind of thing only ends one way, nowadays, and shotgun weddings aren’t for him.  
  
Still. Carlos probably hasn’t even left work, and Logan’s obviously out picking night-flowering whatever to mix with the ancient Percocet pills at the apothecary, because his life is all about creating new and exciting remedies.  
  
In a small voice, Kendall admits, “I am tired.”  
  
“Go take a nap. You’ve still got a few hours before you have to hightail it to the beach.” James’s lips curve; he jokes, “I’ll make sure you stay safe and sound.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even crack a grin at that. He knows it’s true, of course. James has steel at his core, hidden beneath the pretty and vain playboy. There is no one on this earth that Kendall trusts more. But still. He confesses, “It’s too quiet downstairs.”  
  
And it is. It’s been years since Minnesota, but that doesn’t stop him from remembering. He still expects his mom to yell at him for refusing to pick up his room. He still expects Katie to snuggle into his bed and demand a bed time story. Kendall stares at his bare feet, peeking out from the hem of his jeans, tangled with James’s.  
  
“Hey.” James squeezes tight around his shoulders, pressing Kendall into his side. He’s warm, sun baked. He smells like sea salt and the musk of his favorite man spray. He is familiar. Safe. “It’s okay. Sleep here.”  
  
“You serious?”  
  
“Why not?” James pushes Kendall’s head down until it’s pillowed against his thigh. “Sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

  
\---

  
Kendall dreams of blue skies, stretching in every which direction, of skeletal branches and the eerie incandescence of snow, reflecting back that blue, violet-blue, violent blue sky.  
  
It is his last memory of home.  
  
The scenery never changes, but sometimes it is punctuated by laughter: Carlos, Logan, and James. Other times, the noise that trembles through the air is screaming, shrill and terrible, a train whistle blare of shrieks that turns the back of his neck to ice and makes his skin stand at attention. Kendall tries to fumble for his gun, but it is _Minnesota_. He doesn’t have one yet.  
  
Kendall wakes up in a cold sweat, a flutter of fabric tickling at his nose, terror a knot in his stomach.  
  
“Wakey, wakey,” James sings, half golden from sunlight, half painted in shadows. He dangles something truly hideous in front of Kendall’s face, a shirt that is printed in blood orange and royal blue and rose petal red.  
  
“What is this?” Kendall asks sleepily, because he doesn’t remember accepting invites to any luaus lately.  
  
“It’s a Hawaiian shirt.” Well. Obviously. Kendall stares at the very, very bright print skeptically. “It’s festive,” James adds defensively.  
  
“It’s going to make you look like a circus freak,” Kendall decides.  
  
James rolls his eyes. “Good thing I got it for you, then.”  
  
“What? I am _not_ wearing that.”  
  
“Yes, yes you are. You cannot wear the same plaid button down you wear every day to _Rocque Records_. Besides.” James leans in close and sniffs Kendall’s shirt, still lying open against his chest. “It smells like vodka and sex.”  
  
“I happen to _like_ that smell.”  
  
James rolls his eyes again. “Don’t be stubborn.”  
  
“Don’t be an ass,” Kendall counters.  
  
There is an ensuing scuffle, and Kendall- of course- is forced into the shirt because he has considerably more respect for life and the way the shingles slip beneath the squirm of their bodies than James, who scrabbles across the rooftop with leonine grace. James’s eyes catch the sunlight and throw colors back out, gold and brown and flecks of green, dazzling in a way that makes Kendall have to pause to catch his breath. He finally submits to the assault the only way Kendall can ever willfully submit to anything; with a pounding heart, laughter, and a begrudging smile as wide as the ocean that sparkles in the distance.  
  
“Only for you, dude,” he tells James, picking at the garishly loud fabric, and James grins, an easy gesture that says he _knows_.

  
\---

  
The road Kendall takes to the beachfront studios is one of the most well-traveled in Verona, lined with what used to be cheerful tourist attractions like surf shops and shell-filled boutiques, California style and the substance of dreams. Now those stores are broken glass and faded pastel paint, adobe oversaturated with sun and salt, turned the color of dried blood and rust. Some of the buildings still house trade, like the apothecary where Logan whiles away his hours, or the chamber of commerce that hosts a daily flea market of ever changing goods. There’s even a church, more a chapel than anything else, with a high-rising steeple and pretentions of religion.  
  
The people on the street are more variegated, though sometimes it’s hard to tell beneath the layer of filth. And there are so many of them. Every time Kendall looks, there’s a new flood of people at Verona’s gates. It doesn’t really look like humanity has a population problem, but the Reproduction Initiative has all these fancy pamphlets with numbers and graphs, and Logan always says they look pretty accurate to him. Still, here in the streets there are hundreds; scar-faced crooks and vacant-eyed wastrels, Hawk’s sentinels and the ever lost refugees. So many refugees.  
  
It’s not like the entire country has been decimated. Food still comes via trade routes to the North, farming towns full of risk takers, unwilling to sacrifice their freedom for the protection a walled city like Verona can afford. But towns outside the realm of civilized society become rarer and rarer with each passing year while Verona and places like it thrive. And today, the city certainly is _thriving_. There are dancers from the cabarets stumbling back home and a group of professional looking women on their way to the more upscale part of the city. There are pale-faced children tucked behind their mother’s skirts like something out of a photography book on the Great Depression and men in bright white suits that walk around like the world is the same place it was twenty years back.  
  
It should be sad, but instead, it’s life. Kendall hasn’t known another kind of existence in a very long while, and the hustle and bustle of traders and barterers and cheats doesn’t actually look anything like sad. People yell, shout, holler, laugh. They _live_ , and Kendall can’t find a whole lot of tragedy in that.  
  
He weaves in and out of tables on the sidewalk pushing thick, marbled leather in assorted colors, chocolate and beige and dung, saffron and the black of an oil spill. There are vegetables, some half rotted through, some fresh from the farmlands up north. Animals, rank with death, their intestines spilled across cloth like tea leaves, like a fortune teller’s bounty. Scavenged things; bicycles and scooters, books and toys, clothes moth bitten with age and silverware too tarnished to catch the sun and throw it back out into the world. The shells of electronics turned to fidget boxes; a cell phone that can hold herbs or a computer casing perfect for sensitive documents. It’s ridiculous, the things the human imagination comes up with.  
  
It’s impressive.  
  
By the time Kendall reaches Rocque Records he can already tell by the angle of the sun that he’s late. The studios are actually three beach bungalows standing like chickens in a row, decrepit on the outside, but completely refurbished inside. Kendall makes his way up the porch, trepidation brewing in his stomach. He feels ridiculous in the Hawaiian shirt, and his hands have gone all clammy.  
  
“Suck it up,” he mumbles, coaxing himself into bravery the same way he’s been doing since he was small.  
  
When he walks into Rocque Records, it is with the air of someone who’s been there a million times before. A pretty young woman checks his credentials and then introduces herself as Kelly. She’s sweet but brisk when she instructs him to, “Follow me. Time to meet the boss.”  
  
Now, Kendall isn’t sure what he expects of _the boss_ , but it isn’t a large man in a Hawaiian shirt that is nearly identical to the one James picked out, yelling at the top of his lungs at some cowering girl. He is sitting in the middle of an array of black switchboards with buttons that look like they probably operate a space ship, but are obviously old. The whole room is well worn, like it might really have been something years ago, but can no longer hide its age.  
  
Kelly has to clear her throat at increasingly louder decibels to catch Gustavo's attention, and by the time she does, Kendall almost wishes she hadn’t. Gustavo Rocque is a local legend. He is also red-faced and sweating and glaring at Kendall like he’s the one who switched the sun on high.  
  
“What?” he yells, making hand gestures at Kelly that Kendall isn’t sure how to interpret. He doesn’t like being yelled at.  
  
“This is the kid Griffin sent over. For security?”  
  
Gustavo looks him up and down and up again. Then he demands, “Where’s the rest of him?”  
  
Kendall will not hit his new boss.  
  
“He looks like one of the mongrels Hawk keeps by the fences,” Rocque continues.  
  
Kendall will not hit his new boss.  
  
Then, dubiously, “Does he even know how to use a gun?”  
  
Kendall will not hit his- oh, fuck it. He doesn’t punch Gustavo, but he does seethe sarcasm when he snaps, “I don’t know, do I?”  
  
He frees the gun from his holster and twirls it in his hand, trying to give the move some flare so that Rocque will be impressed. Impressed is not anything like what he looks, but there is some relief in Gustavo’s voice when he says, “That’ll do.”  
  
Rocque spins in his chair, and the girl, the one still cowering behind the ancient sound booth’s glass, cringes, thinking he’s going to start in on her again. He seems to have completely forgotten Kendall, which, _not cool_. Kendall’s maybe pouting a little. That trick always impresses everyone else.  
  
When it becomes clear that Gustavo isn’t planning on saying anything more, he clears his throat and asks, “So…uh. What do I do, exactly?”  
  
There is a noise that doesn’t exactly sound kind, and Gustavo swivels his chair back around. The girl sags against the wall in relief.  
  
“ _You_ sit back and watch _me_ make _magic_.” Gustavo wiggles his fingers and makes this face that is the exact definition of ludicrous. And then he keeps on making it.  
  
Kendall raises his eyebrows. “Are you okay?”  
  
In a low voice, Kelly says, “Don’t worry, it’s not a seizure. He always does that.”  
  
Gustavo growls. It is not very intimidating. He announces, “Here’s how things work. Don’t get in my way and I won’t make Kelly here shoot you.”  
  
Kelly’s wearing a smart pantsuit with a weapons holster flashing at her side. For emphasis, she extracts her gun and twirls it like Kendall, albeit a little clumsily. Then she dangles it off the edge of her finger and sighs. “Don’t make me shoot you. I have no idea how to use this thing.”  
  
“I could teach you,” Kendall offers. He makes sure to stand well out of the line of the barrel.  
  
“Well aren’t you sweet?” Kelly pats his hand.  
  
Gustavo rolls his eyes heavenward. “Don’t get attached to my guard dog.”  
  
“Don’t call him a dog,” Kelly retorts. “He’s a human being.”  
  
“He’s a dog.” Gustavo emphasizes. “Don’t come crying to me when he gets put down.”  
  
And that is the end of Kendall’s first meeting with Gustavo Rocque. He gets introduced to plenty of other people throughout the day, of course, and gets to run through a whole list of duties that include patrols and taking care of problem clients. Mostly Kendall is a little bewildered and a lot overwhelmed, because he still doesn’t get why a stupid record studio needs protection.  
  
The only time his hackles really go up is when one of Griffin’s other security workers stops by during lunch to flirt with Kelly. He’s wearing an insignia that designates him as a higher up in Hawk’s militia, which mostly makes Kendall thinks of nights camped out on the border of Verona, being taunted and jeered at while they waited their turn to go through the trials to enter the city. He remembers the slurs that got thrown his way, making his cheeks heat with shame, and the way one militiaman pissed on some poor kid that was begging admittance, cold and hungry and alone.  
  
Kendall doesn’t have the best track record with Hawk’s posse. He also has never seen one willing to work with Griffin before. Usually people choose one faction or the other.  
  
Kelly laughs when she introduces them, totally oblivious to how uncomfortable Kendall is. “This is Dak. Dak’s gun is bigger than yours. I’d be nice to Dak.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t think he and Dak will be getting along. Even if he hadn’t had a tiny hawk on his collar, Dak’s got the kind of self-possessed confidence that’s inherent to guys with pretty faces and a lot of power, the same confidence that James has carried around for his entire life. But James is Kendall’s best friend, while Dak is some city official with a smarmy smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes, more practiced than genuine.  
  
He doesn’t start anything, though. Kendall has been getting by on a smile and a wink for a long time, and despite Gustavo’s anger management issues, today is the first day in ages that Kendall has felt something like secure. Logan works without a salary, because training with medicine promises a future the way a pretty girl promises love with a smile. And what James makes is barely enough to feed a small child, much less four full grown almost-men. Carlos rakes in most of the cash, and it still hasn't been enough. But this job?  
  
No more scrounging together coins from the back of that ratty old sofa in their crashpad just to catch a bite to eat. No more salvaging or dumpster diving or god, _begging_. How embarrassing.  
  
Besides, Dak’s gun really is way bigger than his.  
  
Kendall spends his afternoon watching Gustavo work his magic, which is actually more interesting than he thought it would be. The cowering girl in the glass box has an amazing voice on her, and despite all the bellowing, Gustavo manages to wheedle it out and mold it into something better than great, something _beautiful_. In the middle of his constellation of dinosaur age-electronics and dust, Gustavo really is a wizard.  
  
Kendall only makes it halfway down the main road when he finally stumbles out of work. There, he finds Camille cross legged on the roof of an old El Dorado, face tilted against the sun.  
  
There aren’t any working cars in Verona because there isn’t any gas left, but the rusted out shells of old hunkers sit in the middle of streets, abandoned. Some of them have been pushed to the side as part of a community effort to make some space, but the one Camille has chosen is smack dab in the middle of the street, hard to miss.  
  
She’s got a flare for dramatic entrances.  
  
They’re close to the beach, and when Camille sees Kendall she smiles and yells across the thunder of the waves, “How was work?”  
  
A rebel wind picks up her hair, makes it dance a quadrille around her head, and then dies down as quickly as it came. Camille laughs, sniffs the air. “Smells like a good beach day.”  
  
Kendall mostly thinks the air smells of smog and brine, but whatever. He’s happy for the company. “Don’t you have a job to do?”  
  
“It’s a big day, and I’ve got some time to kill.” Camille’s smile grows. “Figured I’d come out and support you.”  
  
“I don’t need support,” Kendall objects, even though her presence fills him with warmth. Good friends can be really hard to come by, but Camille proves her mettle time and time again. She is the most capricious person Kendall knows, but she is also one of the best people he’s ever had the pleasure of meeting.  
  
“Too bad.” Camille hops off the car with easy grace, moving like a dancer. “You’re getting it anyway, you big dummy.”  
  
They walk in step, heels catching the crumbling pavement at exactly the same time. Camille asks Kendall about the studios, and he tells her about Gustavo and Kelly and the cringing singer and Dak.  
  
“I know him. He’s a dick,” Camille says bluntly, and then she switches topics as quick as the breeze changes, giving Kendall a full run down of the dog fights Hawk’s men have been hosting on the outskirts of the city.  
  
The boardwalk is busy, if not crowded. On the way up the steps, they run into a girl wearing a long, dark robe and carrying a stack of pamphlets. A religious nut, obviously. Kendall tries to avert his eyes, but there is no way to get around her. She ends up handing a pamphlet to both of them, and when Camille tries to say _no thank you_ , the girl shakes her head and refuses to take it back.  
  
“The world is disappearing around us, miss. You have to believe in something.” She bops her head and continues, “May grace light your way.”  
  
Camille rolls her eyes. “We’ll get right on that.”  
  
Kendall crumples his own pamphlet, shoving it into his pocket instead of throwing it on the street like so many of the other passersby are doing. His mother raised him to be polite.  
  
They pass a few food vendors, and nearby, a guy perched at the edge of a rotten plank of wood, strumming a guitar, twisting the melody through his fingers and shaping it into something that Kendall can feel in his bones. They walk past him like it is common place, and it is.  
  
Kendall doesn’t know much about music, but it really is everywhere. Refugees have been flocking to the city since its foundation, and over time they’ve figured out that talent gives them an edge, a means to get past Hawk’s men and score a chance with Gustavo Rocque and Radio Free Griffin. Gustavo is a picky bastard, and most acts don’t make it behind glass to be ridiculed and degraded and _heard_ , but that doesn’t mean anyone ever gives up the hobby. Verona is filled to the brim with street musicians, violinists with battered strings and freestyle singers, drummers who can coax a sound out of any hollow object and pianists who create instruments from bone.  
  
“You must have had a good night,” Camille muses.  
  
“Why do you think that?”  
  
She raises her eyes heavenward, smirks. “You’re humming. Are you going to see her again?”  
  
“Mercedes?” Kendall feels this fond smile tug at his lips. “Probably.”  
  
They didn’t talk about it, but Kendall’s got a good feeling.  
  
At the far end of the beach, there is a half-constructed _something_ , a long tarp fluttering over the edges of it.  
  
“Look at that.” Camille points to the monstrosity. “Building another monument to themselves. Like it makes any difference on the outside.”  
  
“How do you know it doesn’t?” Kendall’s curiosity is genuine. His knowledge of the world is mostly limited to Minnesota, Verona, and the back roads that spider web between the two. He’s never known anything else.  
  
“Please.” Camille scoffs, kicking up sand with her boot. “Who’s going to see it?”  
  
“Aliens?” Kendall suggests. “I don’t know. Maybe the city board just wants to show off their stupid supremacy.”  
  
Shadows settle on Camille’s features. “I know it seems like they’re gods, here, but outside of Verona the stupid city board consists of nobodies. Why do you think they built the walls? The Council has the real power. That's why people like Griffin and Hawk fight to be on it.”  
  
“I don’t. Think about it, I mean.” Kendall says, and that’s mostly true. He tries not to dwell on things he cannot fix or change.  
  
“You should try it. Thinking, I mean,” Camille teases. She kicks off her boots and then does it again, changes the subject as easily as if it’s a sundress that doesn’t fit right.  
  
The two of them walk right into the surf, where the water is clean, blue, and cold. Goosebumps trail up Kendall’s pale legs. Camille splashes him in the face, and that simply means _war_ , and they while away a few hours splashing and laughing and sunning themselves like beached seals until their clothes are dry, but stiff with salt.  
  
It’s a good day. The best Kendall has had in ages. Summer brands his skin, a red burn across the bridge of his nose and a flush high in his cheeks. He digs his toes into the sand, reveling in it.  
  
Every odd job he’s worked since arriving in Verona has been on the other side of the city, wetbacking construction sites or running the fences with Camille as a freelance. He never gets much of an opportunity to just enjoy the sun and the beach all at the same time.  
  
Camille makes an angel in the sand, waving her arms back and forth lethargically until her skin is sticky with garnet, rose quartz, and granules of obsidian. Her hair is tangled from the waves, and her eyes are bright, but feral. She looks the same the first time Kendall met her, wild energy reverberating through her whole body.  
  
Camille turns to him, pretty as a mermaid with the sand and the sky and the salt air shading her smile. She blurts, “I have a new hobby, you know.”  
  
“Oh yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. Palm reading! It’s great. This woman on the other side has been teaching me while she waits for her admit pass.” Camille laughs, grabbing for his hand. “Want me to tell your fortune?”  
  
“I’m game.”  
  
“Let’s see.” Camille traces his palm, the places where the lines branch and curve and dissipate. “Your fate line is deep.”  
  
“My fate line? You’re making that up. Is that a good thing?”  
  
Camille’s eyes widen comically, her thick eyelashes a stark contrast against her skin. “That depends on how much you like the idea of some higher force pulling your strings.”  
  
The idea makes Kendall grumpy. He scowls. “Not at all.”  
  
“Right.” Camille nods. “Your heart line is deep too. That’s surprising, considering it’s _you_.”  
  
“Hey!” Kendall considers. “I don’t even know why I’m insulted, what does that mean?”  
  
“It means you’ll find your one true love,” Camille coos. “Isn’t that sweet?”  
  
Kendall snorts.  
  
“Palmistry is serious business, Knight. Listen up. This is your-“ She cuts off, staring at Kendall’s palm like it’s a crystal ball, swimming with the images of monsters.  
  
“My what? Is that my sex line? Because it looks awfully short.” He makes a face.  
  
“It’s- you know what? I don’t remember.” Camille laughs, and there is an edge to her voice that Kendall can’t translate, but that is nothing new. Camille’s always a little bit of a mystery to him. “I’m not very good at this yet.”  
  
“I want my money back.”  
  
“Jerk.” Camille heaves herself back in the sand. “It’s a dumb hobby anyway. It’s not like anyone can really predict the future.”  
  
“I don’t know about that.” Kendall lies back beside her. “I’ve got a job, I met a cute girl, and I’m on the beach with one of my best friends. The future’s looking up.”  
  
And it is. Kendall doesn’t know what life was like before the crash, but he knows what it is now. Short and violent. At least today he’s finally, finally having fun.  
  
Overhead, the cotton candy sky grows flush with fuchsia as the hour wears on, the edges of clouds bruised with indigo. They buy snacks from a local vendor and stay on the beach until well past nightfall, when even the lone guitarist has packed up and gone home.  
  
The moon is finally on the rise when Camille says, “Let me walk you to your door.”  
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
“It’s a big bad world out there, Knight. I think you need some protecting.”  
  
“Well, if you insist.” Kendall graciously takes Camille’s extended arm, and they saunter off the beach the same way they entered, making cracks at each other and Verona and the world.

  
\---

  
There’s an execution notice tacked on the front door. It’s scheduled for Saturday.  
  
Kendall swallows. Camille growls.  
  
The idea that a person can be killed for doing what they want with their own bodies doesn’t sit right with either of them. It’s certainly not Kendall’s business who loves who or who doesn’t want kids, and he can’t really see why it’s anyone else’s either. Love never hurt anyone.  
  
Besides, how does killing people help the population grow?  
  
“It’s not about continuing the human race.” Camille says quietly, tapping against the flyer. “It’s about power. They have it. We don’t. And they keep reminding us so we don’t get out of line.”  
  
When Kendall doesn’t answer, Camille prompts, “Are you going to go?”  
  
“No.”  
  
He hates executions. He hates the theatrics of them. He hates the way Mayor Bitters waves at the crowds like he’s a contestant in a pageant, Griffin and Hawk silent statues at his back, and Kendall hateshates _hates_ the blood thirst in people’s eyes. It’s not that he’s a pacifist, or that he has a problem with violence.  
  
It is that this violence is meaningless. It does not protect or defend or help anyone survive anything. It’s just the Reproduction Initiative, asserting its authority over everyone, like Camille says.  
  
The Initiative is a shoot-off of the military war tribunal that began when large chunks of America turned to mulch. No one knows where it’s based out of, or even who the shadowy figures that run it are, exactly. But once a month, a member of the Copulation Council swings by Verona with a truckload of posters and a clipboard to check on humanity’s _progress_.  
  
Griffin and Hawk might own the city, might make every single pretense of running it, but they’re not on the CC. They are bound by the same rules as every other citizen of Verona – of the country, really- forced to kowtow whenever a Council member deigns to visit. Of course, the mayor is the one with the real weight on his shoulders.  
  
Bitters was placed in office as one of Griffin’s pawns, but the power went straight to his head. He is a bumbling caricature of a man, but he is shrewd, and he enforces the Initiative’s mandates with an iron fist.  
  
In another world, in a book, someone would rebel. But this is real life, and on the tail end of a long, brutal war, no one has the energy left to stage a coup. People want peace, and they’re willing to sacrifice anything to get it.  
  
Kendall’s not any different. He isn’t planning any revolutions in the future.  
  
He wishes good night to Camille and stomps up into the pad, the execution notice gnawing at the edges of his otherwise good mood. The apartment is dark, but that’s not exactly a huge surprise. It’s well past eleven, and James and Carlos like late nights, while Logan is all about early mornings.  
  
Kendall’s hand is on the knob to the bedroom they all share when a voice from the couch warns, “I wouldn’t go in there.”  
  
He turns to see Logan, cocooned in blankets, trying to catch some sleep on the lumpy old sofa they liberated from some house on the outskirts of town.  
  
At Kendall’s questioning look, Logan says, “James brought home his date. _Yipee_.”  
  
Kendall groans. “And you didn’t think I’d like to have some input on this?”  
  
“We thought you were out with Mercedes. James said you two were getting along pretty well.” Logan makes a face. “He explained that graphically. In great detail. To make him stop, I told him it was okay if he took the bedroom tonight.”  
  
Oh.  
  
The door reverberates, rhythmic, the knob jumping in Kendall’s hand like the whole room is shaking and _oh_. Logan moans and pulls a pillow over his head. “It’s been like this all night.” He yells, “Some of us would like some peace and quiet already!”  
  
The shaking continues, thud, bump, _slam,_ and there is the sound of guttural laughter that cuts off, turns to a groan. The floorboards creak, a squeak, a scream, and Kendall imagines James rolling onto his back, pulling the girl up and onto him in one smooth motion, her thighs braced tight at his hips.  
  
It’s too hot to think about. Kendall winces. He slides down against the door, wood splinters pressing through the stupid Hawaiian shirt and pricking at his skin.  
  
Logan throws him a sympathetic look. “Don’t sleep on the floor. I can try to squeeze you in up here?”  
  
“No. It’s-“ Through the door, James makes this noise that Kendall can feel in his marrow, and he tries not to look guilty when Logan lets off a string of curse words and buries his face further into his pillow. “It’s fine.”  
  
It’s really not fine at all.  
  
The sound of James’s voice doesn’t turn Kendall on. That would be sick. Wrong.  
  
Just…it’s kind of sexy. Two people. Getting it on.  
  
It’s like the soundtrack to porn, and Kendall’s a guy. He’s supposed to like that.  
  
Right?  
  
The trembling and banging stops, if only temporarily, and Logan drifts off into sleep. There, in the still of the night, Kendall allows himself to wonder what James and his lady-friend are doing now that it’s quiet; whether James is holding himself still over the girl, dipping in and out of her like a tease, or if she’s sucking him off, maybe. Kendall thinks about it, about the faceless date of James’s pressing her mouth against his skin, making James hot for it while she tongues around hollows and bones without actually touching his dick. He thinks about the face James would make when she finally, blessedly took him between her lips, and-  
  
Kendall licks the corner of his mouth and imagines he tastes salt skin and cum; he teases it over his tongue only to realize he doesn’t actually taste anything at all.  
  
Shit.  
  
He can’t take this. Theirs is absolutely no way that Kendall is going to be able to stand a whole night of it. He shakes Logan awake, gentle, murmuring, “I’m going to see Mercedes. Tell James?”  
  
Logan replies with something that sounds distinctly like, “Mmmarghan _go_.”  
  
Kendall takes it as an okay.  
  
The streets are empty, like they are every night, like Verona is a ghost town. It makes Kendall think of a few years back, when they were still stuck somewhere between Minnesota and California and convinced they’d never reach any kind of destination. Camille always says she saved the four of them from life on the road, and Kendall never, ever corrects her because he is insanely grateful to have this place, this safehaven of a city. But sometimes, privately, he thinks that life on the road was not that bad. There were days of footraces and freedom, and nights of campfires and ghost stories, eyes growing heavy with exhaustion, but each of them insistent on wakefulness until James deigned to sing a lullaby or three.  
  
His voice was always the last memory Kendall had before he drifted off to sleep.  
  
Kendall knows there is a reason that they came to Verona in the first place, and he remembers the blood and the gore and the absolute terror that punctuated every moment they traveled in the great, wide beyond. And yet sometimes he still thinks they could have been better out there, on their own.  
  
He thinks of James and the girl and he quickens his pace.  
  
Kendall finds his way by the light of the moon, only pausing when he reaches the gates surrounding Mercedes’s house. It’s massive, so damn huge that an entire village could live inside. He wants to know what she does, what her family does, but it’s not like they know each other very well. Definitely not well enough for Kendall to try sneaking into her bedroom in the middle of the night.  
  
He scales the closed wrought iron fence, feeling like a total creep. He has no idea if he was supposed to be a one night stand or something more, but he can fully acknowledge that what he’s doing is a little bit insane. He just couldn’t stand listening to James, not like that, not anymore. It made his gut clench and twist and somersault in his stomach, made him feel weird in ways he couldn’t quite pin down.  
  
Kendall can’t quite bring himself to actually climb the trellis to Mercedes’ room, but he throws a few pebbles in what he hopes are a romantic manner- and he only misses once- until she comes to her balcony.  
  
A myriad of emotions flit over her face, ranging from annoyance to curiosity to something dark and fleeting, like anger. Her nails, bright red now, dig into the railing, contrasting against the stone like a bloodstain. “What the hell, Knight?”  
  
Kendall doesn’t remember telling her his last name. He brushes it off and calls, “Can I come up?”  
  
Mercedes waves frantically, hissing at him to _hurry, already_.  
  
Kendall does. When he reaches the balcony, Mercedes helps haul him over. She’s wearing this thin, gauzy night dress that doesn’t actually cover anything up, and she doesn’t look even remotely embarrassed about it. “What do you think you’re doing?”  
  
Kendall tries for a charming smile, the same one that used to win over his mom and his baby sister back before Minnesota burned. “I missed you?”  
  
It sounds more like a question than he means it to. He flounders, trying to save the night, but before he can stick his foot any further in his mouth, Mercedes laughs. A grin breaks over her face, bright as the sun, and she says, “I don’t know why I think your strangeness is cute.”  
  
Meekly, Kendall ventures, “Does that mean I don’t have to leave?”  
  
“Not tonight.” Mercedes hooks a finger in one of his belt loops, pulling him close. Her mouth hovers close to his, just for a beat, and then her lips press together. “But don’t get used to it. I dictate the booty calls from now on, alright?”  
  
“Works for me.”  
  
Kendall lets Mercedes pull him into her room, and watches her strip bare. She runs her hands down her body, and in the moonlight she glows.  
  
“You have to leave before morning, okay?”  
  
Kendall stares, mouth dry, openly awed. He doesn’t think he’s ever going to get past the point where he thinks another naked human being is the coolest thing ever. But he manages to stutter out an affirmative, and then he doesn’t say anything else for a long, long time.


	3. Big Fire, Big Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want to get the hell out of this city, before it burns. Because it will. One day, all of this will be ashes.”

The summer passes like that, with Kendall and Mercedes falling in and out of bed (or pools or dark corners at dark parties and once on her dad’s bed).  
  
It’s the most fun Kendall has had in a long while; Mercedes is a whirlwind. She doesn’t like the word _no_ , seeing as how she apparently hasn’t heard it all that often, and it means all her horizons are wide open. Frequent sex turns into talking, about friends or politics or surfing, even. And talking turns into hanging out, until the next thing Kendall knows he’s spent every night in the past month with Mercedes, wrapped up in her laughter and her smile and the sweetness of her voice. He realizes it’s an issue. Kendall has spent his whole life being warned against falling too much, too fast, too hard, but he doesn’t know how to stop. He’s infatuated with her. Mercedes makes his pulse beat faster and his jeans go tight. When she’s gone, she’s all he can think about.  
  
Hell, same when she’s there.  
  
Being around her is like downing five shots of vodka in quick succession. Everything turns shiny and beautiful, and for a while the world is a dream. Then, when it’s over, the world is hard and cold again. Kendall keeps trying to get closer to Mercedes to bring the shiny back.  
  
It’s inevitable that dating her has a down side.  
  
Kendall has learned to cope with her slightly enigmatic behavior. He’s made a habit of meeting up with her after work, even though he still has _no idea_ where exactly it is that she works, and okay, maybe that bugs him. A lot.  
  
“What exactly do you do? I haven’t seen you at the studios,” he asks for the millionth time. Mercedes smiles, the pink curve of her lips so self-assured, so fucking sexy that he almost gets distracted from the question.  
  
“It’s a secret.”  
  
Kendall takes a lot of pride in his ability to be sneaky and wheedle information out of people, but Mercedes consistently refuses to take the bait. Despite her carefree, slightly flighty attitude, the girl is sharp. It mostly just makes Kendall like her more.  
  
Right up until the day that he finds out what exactly it is that Mercedes does.  
  
He’s in the studio, watching Gustavo work his magic. The man loves music with a depth and a passion that Kendall isn’t used to, has rarely seen. There is nothing in the world he appreciates more; it is air, water, food. It is the reason he wakes up in the morning and the idea that lulls him to sleep every night. His body sings with it, with creative energy that hums beneath his skin. And once he figures out that Kendall’s not a complete moron, he’s sort of becoming okay with Kendall’s presence. Gustavo lets him kick around the studio and push and poke things, and only yells at him if he’s being obnoxious.  
  
Like now.   
  
“How am I obnoxious?” Kendall demands, glaring at the very heavy, very expensive piece of equipment that Gustavo just threw at him. It lays in smithereens on the floor.  
  
“You hum. All the time. It’s insufferable.” Gustavo yells, his face red with the effort.  
  
“At least he’s on key.” Kelly laughs.  
  
Gustavo grumbles something rude and turns his attention back to the sound booth, where a timid boy stands, clenching his fingers nervously around the hem of his shirt. “Knight, shut up and let me _think_.” He jabs the speaker button on the mixer and adds, “You, kid, try not to suck this time.”  
  
The guy nods frantically, and Kendall can practically smell his fear. He’s about to tell Gustavo to let up already, but a pale face peeks into the studio. It’s one of the mole men, Gustavo’s sound techs, who spend all their time in the basement cutting together edits until they’re radio-ready.  
  
“Heads up,” he says. “Zevon’s on his way in.”  
  
“Dick,” Kendall bites out, posture turning rigid. In the months he’s worked at Rocque Records, Dak hasn’t done anything to improve Kendall’s opinion of him.  
  
There’s not even a reason for it. The guy just gives Kendall very bad vibes.  
  
“Kendall!” Kelly turns her stern face on. Kendall only maybe cowers a little.  
  
After a beat, Gustavo says, “He’s right. I hate that kid. He’s creepy.”  
  
Kelly objects, “He’s nice.”  
  
“He’s ambitious.”  
  
Kelly counters. “That’s not a bad thing.”  
  
“It is when you indirectly work for the Copulation Cunts,” Gustavo intones.  
  
Kelly smacks him across the head, jutting her chin towards the kid in the sound booth. “Language.”  
  
“ _Ow_?” Gustavo glares, rubbing his head. “It’s a sound proof box and I’m not pressing the button!”  
  
“Still. Maybe he can lip read.”  
  
“Does he look smart enough for that?” Gustavo asks. Doubtfully, he mouths, “ _I don’t think so_.”  
  
Kendall snorts into his hand, ignoring the way Kelly directs more of her _stern_ straight at him. Gustavo’s still nodding his head emphatically when Dak walks into the studio.  
  
“Gustavo, I need you to sign off on these for Griffin. Oh, hey, Kelly.” He smiles, all sleazy. The hawk on his collar shines in the dim light, gold, when everything else is burnished.  
  
Gustavo grunts and refuses to acknowledge Dak’s existence. Kelly takes the proffered papers and says, “Gustavo’s a little, um, busy, let me just-“  
  
Kendall hops off the spinny chair he’s been occupying for the past forty minutes. “Dak.”  
  
“Kendall.”  
  
“I’m so glad we all know each other’s names,” Gustavo intones.  
  
“Hey, hey,” Dak flashes his charming smile again, and Kendall’s skin crawls. He doesn’t get why Dak is all Hollywood pizzazz, all the time, when Hollywood doesn’t even exist anymore. “No need for sarcasm, G-Man. I’ll just get what I came for and be out of your hair in no time.”  
  
“That won’t be soon enough,” Kendall mutters, and it’s only after the words have left his mouth that he realizes he’s said them out loud. Kelly is making this absolutely horrified face, but Gustavo is smirking, and Dak is straight up laughing. Kendall stutters, “I didn’t- um-“  
  
“No harm no foul,” Dak says, smooth as a snake. Kendall continues to hate him with his entire being.  
  
“Thank you for bringing these down,” Kelly intervenes, totally sincere, waving the papers around in the air like they might distract Dak’s attention. Gustavo rolls his eyes.  
  
“No probl- hey, is that Mercedes?” Gustavo, Kelly, and Kendall follow his gaze, where, coming up the stairs is the prettiest girl in the whole wide world. Dak’s eyes narrow, evaluating. “Haven’t seen her around in a while.”  
  
“I know. I was beginning to think that someone up there liked me.” Gustavo glares at the ceiling and yells, “Thanks for nothing.”  
  
“Hey,” Kendall protests, but no one’s listening to him. Mercedes is on the top step, a vision in pastel. She makes him think of languid kisses wrapped up in her sheets, of fragrant nights and the devilish lilt of her voice when she tries to get him to _loosen up already, Knight_. But she isn’t smiling, or doing much to acknowledge Kendall at all aside from a head nod. “Kendall.”  
  
“Hey, what-“  
  
Mercedes isn’t paying attention, her gaze already elsewhere. She grits out, “Dak.”  
  
“Goodie, we’re doing the name thing again,” Gustavo says. Then he turns on a grin that’s faker than the one on Dak’s face. “It is such a joy and a delight to see you, Mercedes. How can we help you?”  
  
“Check your calendar. It’s time for a progress report.”  
  
Mercedes crosses her arms.  
  
Gustavo cowers.  
  
Kendall is confused.  
  
“Things are fine. Just fine,” Gustavo’s voice pitches high.  
  
“Is anyone planning on telling me what’s going on here?” Kendall interjects, because patience isn’t high on his list of virtues.   
  
Mercedes sighs, spares him a glance that is less than amused. “Later, baby.”  
  
Dak’s smile flickers.  
  
“Baby? Oh. You know… _her_.” Gustavo says _her_ the same way he might say _bubonic plague_. “No wonder you got the job.”  
  
Kendall wants to be insulted, but he doesn’t know what that means, exactly. Mercedes isn’t doing much to enlighten him, either. She’s got a mean gleam in her eyes, and she says, “Bitter doesn’t look good on you, old man. Show me what you’ve got.”  
  
Obediently, Gustavo spins back towards the sound booth, and okay. Kendall’s bewilderment grows. He knew Mercedes had something to do with Rocque Records, but he wasn’t aware it involved making Gustavo jump through hoops. He doesn’t do that for anyone, as far as Kendall can tell, not even Kelly when she’s at her strictest. But now Gustavo instructs the sickly kid in the booth to sing, and Mercedes listens for a whole five seconds before holding up a hand. “I’ve heard enough. No.”  
  
Kelly objects, “You haven’t even-“  
  
“He’s pitchy. You have the tapes for the last month?”  
  
Kelly frowns. She looks at the boy in the booth and then back at Mercedes before her shoulders slump. “I’ll get them.”  
  
Kendall can’t help it. “Is anyone planning on telling me what’s going on?”  
  
“Not now!” Gustavo, Kelly, and Mercedes snap.  
  
Geez.  
  
Dak smirks.  
  
Kendall sulks. Mercedes smells really pretty, even from across the musty old studio, and he doesn’t enjoy being confused. He watches the girl he’s been banging all summer and Gustavo go about their business, completely at a loss. Gustavo continues to kowtow to Mercedes’s every whim, and while Kendall is used to dropping to his knees for the girl at a single word, he’s pretty sure she probably doesn’t have the same kind of power over the record producer.  
  
It’s kind of boring to watch though, and Kendall is just about to go on rounds to make sure that patrolling is just as lame as he remembers when Dak beats him to it.  
  
“Kelly, Mercedes. Nice seeing you,” Dak says with hooded eyes and that reptilian grin. He wiggles his fingers with practiced composure, a beauty pageant wave that’s not at all impressive.  
  
“I’d say likewise, but.” Mercedes purses her lips. “Don’t let a building fall on you on your way out.”  
  
Well.  
  
As soon as Dak is gone, Kendall decides he’s had enough. He hooks his hand in Mercedes’s elbow, trying to pretend that Kelly and Gustavo aren’t laughing at him. “Come- stop squirming and come here.” He drags her into the empty foyer. “What is going on? Dak?”  
  
“Old boyfriend.” Mercedes tilts her head to the side, considering. The sunlight hits the swell of her cleavage just so, and Kendall tries not to get distracted. “He’s alright, except for the part where he has no soul.”  
  
“Wait, so you dated him before me?”  
  
“Who said we’re dating?”  
  
“Oh. Um. Aren’t we?” Kendall feels so old fashioned, like he’s asked her to go steady or something.  
  
“Calm down, I’m teasing.” Mercedes laughs, lights up the room with it, and says, “Nah, he was…two boyfriends ago, I think?”  
  
“Oh. That makes it a lot better.” Except not at all. “And why does Gustavo seem to _hate_ you?”  
  
Mercedes shifts guiltily, moving from foot to foot with clicking heels. Kendall tries a different tactic. He stares out the big picture window across from Kelly’s reception desk and asks in his firmest voice, “What exactly is it you do?”  
  
She drums her fingers against the desk, examines her cuticles, twirls a finger through her hair. Then Mercedes says, “I’m in charge of scouting new acts for Rocque Records. If the refs look like they have talent, we audition them. I’m the final word on whether they make it on air.”  
  
Kendall isn’t sure how to react to that. It’s a big job.  
  
It’s a better paying job than his crummy security gig.   
  
He whistles, “That’s impressive.”  
  
Mercedes shrugs. “I know what sells, especially to the big investors in the northern citadel and the midlands. Not that anyone pays for the radio, but it takes power to keep it running. We thrive on donations.”  
  
“How do you even get into something like that?”  
  
Mercedes examines her cuticles again. She picks at her skin. She frowns at a water stain in the far corner. Outside, a couple on their way to the beach laughs, long and loud. Inside, the empty space between the two of them is still, silent, stagnant.  
  
Finally, she says, “Probably by being Arthur Griffin’s daughter.” She doesn’t let Kendall process that bomb before barreling on, “I know what Daddy’s friends and their families are looking for. Basically, I’ve been in charge of running the music end of the business since I was fourteen. That leaves Daddy to deal with Hawk. It’s good business.”  
  
“You are…” Kendall pauses, not sure what to say. _Smarter than I gave you credit for_ sounds rude. Filthy rich isn’t exactly a compliment either. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”  
  
“People look at me differently when they know who I am. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I don’t.” She straightens, a haughty tilt to her chin. “Dak is an example of when Daddy’s name didn’t work out so well for me.”  
  
Kendall wants to ask, but he isn’t sure it’s his business.  
  
Besides, he’s got more pressing things on his mind. Just. Mercedes is gorgeous, and he thinks he might even love her, but he’s not going to _die_ for her. He’s not stupid. And fucking around with Griffin’s daughter is really, really _stupid_. It’s like handing death an embossed invitation.  
  
All the things flitting through his mind must show on his face, and that’s always been Kendall’s curse; he wears everything right there, out in the open. Mercedes steps in close, ruffles his hair. She smells like roses. “Look, can we just, not talk about this? Things don’t need to get heavy here. We’re having fun, right?”  
  
“Yeah, but I’d kind of like to-“ She kisses him then, and Kendall mumbles the rest of the words into the soft skin of her mouth, “-not get-“ She keeps on with the lips and the tongue and Kendall’s arguments are fading fast. She tastes of the heat rising off the cracked concrete, crushed jacaranda blossoms and sweetness of her vermilion rouge. “-executed.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mercedes says right back into his mouth. She runs her tongue along his teeth, her fingertips pressing into Kendall’s biceps. “As long as we don’t get caught, where’s the harm?”  
  
Kendall knows there’s an argument here, a really great argument that involves him continuing to do things like living and breathing.  
  
Just.  
  
With Mercedes’s lips hot on his, it’s hard to recall why those things are super important.

  
\---

  
On the way out of the studio that afternoon, Kendall sees the scrawny singer from the sound booth, the guy that Mercedes called pitchy. He’s dragging his feet as he trudges towards the heart of the city. It’s like he’s carrying a bag of bricks, but his arms are empty. Kendall wonders if he has anywhere to go. Because Mercedes, the girl Kendall’s been worshipping like a goddess, probably just destroyed his life.  
  
He’s going to have to find work in construction, or in the market, or worse. The pay is going to be shit, and if he has a family to support, he’s fucked. Royally.  
  
Kendall tries not to care. Life is harsh. Music is cruel.  
  
It still doesn’t make it right.  
  
The sun glares down at them, a lone, angry eye. He can feel sweat prick at the back of his neck. He thinks that it’s been a really fucking long day.  
  
And it doesn’t get any better.  
  
“You’re home? Someone alert the media. It’s a miracle!” James drawls from the couch, where he’s draped himself lethargically across the cushions. It’s barely six o’clock, but James doesn’t look like he’s moved an inch since Kendall left that morning, stopping off at the crashpad for a change of clothes between Mercedes’s and the studio.  
  
“Dude.” Kendall makes to sit down, and when James refuses to move over, he situates himself half on James’s lap. “Don’t make that face. It might stick.”  
  
“Good,” James retorts, this muscle in his jaw jumping like he’s got his teeth gritted too hard. “Then everyone will know my best friend’s a total Judas.”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, let’s not get biblical. What’s wrong?”  
  
James frowns at the wall like it’s done something distasteful. “You like your stupid girlfriend better than m- us. We haven’t seen you in like, a month.”  
  
James, obviously, is not thrilled by Kendall’s happiness.  
  
“You’re exaggerating. I was home this morning.”  
  
“Am I?” James snorts. “Really?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You were home for like, ten minutes. I’ve barely seen you all week,” James complains, kicking the arm of the sofa with his boot. He’s wearing leather; leather pants, and a leather vest, and not really a lot else. The scent of the skin is thick in Kendall’s nose. He’d crack some joke about James dressing like he’s in a biker gang, but James is saying, “I can’t believe you’ve been ditching your best friends for some girl.”  
  
“And I can’t believe you’re being like this.” Kendall groans. “Why are you even mad? You’re the one who told me to hook up with Mercedes in the first place.”  
  
“So you could get over Jo!” James retorts, and he’s up in Kendall’s face, intense fury, the sky and the city a blazing reflection in his eyes.  
  
“Why do you care if I’m over Jo or not?” Kendall demands, and his voice is getting louder, because James is too close, too passionate. Kendall can taste his breath on his lips. His tongue darts out, unconsciously, and he wouldn’t even notice if James wasn’t up in his space, but James follows the movement with his eyes.  
  
Kendall bolts off up the couch. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, electrified, but his spine is icy cold, fear turned tangible.  
  
He doesn’t even know why he’s afraid.  
  
“I do, man, but you just came off one bad relationship. You don’t know what you want.” James hops to his feet with easy grace, following Kendall on his backtrack. He doesn’t even seem to notice that anything’s wrong, but that’s James; forever blissfully oblivious to the fact that Kendall feels uncomfortable and hot, skin too tight, something burning caught in his throat, like he’s trying to swallow down the sun. James just forages on, using his bossy voice, “Luckily, you have _me_. I’m going to teach you to play the field.”  
  
Kendall’s eyes widen. “Great offer. No.”  
  
“Fine.” Primly, James says, “I’m going to the cabaret. You can join me, or you can go cavort with your…lady friend.” He states, “Bros over hos.”  
  
“You’re going to go watch Carlos dance?”  
  
James shrugs a shoulder, supremely unconcerned. “Sure, why not?”  
  
“That’s a little gay, dude.”  
  
“Your face is a little gay.”  
  
“Oh, that’s mature.”  
  
“Are you coming or not?” James snaps, and of course Kendall is. Pride makes people do stupid things, and James’s pride is obviously hurt. Kendall can’t leave James like this, angry and off-balance.  
  
He needs to make it better, _somehow_.

\---

  
The moon is a watermark in the bright blue sky.  
  
Kendall listens to the crunch of their footsteps against gravel and tries not to worry. He’s never seen Carlos dance before. James and Logan visited the cabaret a handful of times after Carlos landed the job, but mostly their stories about the place just made Kendall feel uncomfortable. He doesn’t like the idea of strangers jerking off to one of his best friends, even if his best friend is wearing a sequined bra and nylons at the time.  
  
He also doesn’t like the idea that someone can be arrested for doing the same, if they look _too_ into it. What defines over-eagerness, and how does one go about avoiding it? Kendall wishes the line between lust and certain demise were more clearly demarcated. He wishes Carlos wasn’t involved in what seems like a witch hunt to Kendall, plain and simple.  
  
“Come on, buddy, this will be great. It’s a beautiful night, and we are going to get _wasted_.” James gestures at the sky, and it’s not exactly reassuring. He looks at the stars like they are living, breathing entities. Like he can see them move and change and sparkle, diamond-esque. When Kendall looks up, their bright faces betray nothing. He’s still worried.  
  
“Seriously,” James adds, amplifying his voice, like volume will make the crease mark on Kendall’s face vanish.  
  
It works, a little. James lights up when he smiles, happiness radiant as starshine. It transforms him, and Kendall is not immune to that. He tries to smile back, says, “Yeah. _Great_ ,” and even if it’s not super convincing, it’s good enough for James.  
  
It has to be, because they’re there.  
  
The cabaret where Carlos works has always been a cabaret. Maybe it was something different back in the twenties, a lounge or a speakeasy, but it’s hard to imagine the dilapidated building with its burnt out neon signs ever selling anything but flesh and sex. James walks behind the high flying, dirty white sign advertising _Girls-Girls-Girls_ beneath the words _Gentlemen’s Club_ , like lust and intoxication are gentlemanly pursuits. He heads straight in, as if he owns the place, because James is accustomed to being the most attractive person in the room and has the sense of entitlement that goes right along with it.  
  
He orders them each a glass of moonshine and stalks right up to the front of the club, ignoring the shadowy figures of men they don’t know, hunkered down in booths, caught somewhere between desire and shame. He settles down at a table and motions wildly for Kendall to join him.  
  
Kendall slinks towards the booth, face burning. There are three dancers in action right now, Carlos and two others that Kendall doesn’t know. “This is wrong,” Kendall announces. “Very wrong.”  
  
James orders, “Relax. Have fun. Enjoy yourself.”  
  
That’s hard. Kendall can barely concentrate on the dancers, too occupied with judging the patrons. He doesn’t like being unable to tell who to trust, who is just a normal Joe, looking for a good time, and who is a city minder, a spy looking for someone to hang on the business end of a noose.  
  
“Relax,” James repeats, a hand on Kendall’s thigh, and that isn’t helping anything. Around them, beneath the music, there is a rustle of clothes, the slap of skin. There are men, hands on their dicks, and this is the epitome of what Kendall’s been told is _wrong_ since he first came to Verona. He tries to reign in his nerves, tries to keep them from clanging-jangling-ringing discordantly inside of him, but he doesn’t know how.  
  
“Yeah. Um. That guy kind of looks like you,” Kendall jokes, pointing to one of the dancers, but it’s only after the words fall from his lips that he realizes it’s not actually a joke. Beneath the fedora and the pageboy wig and the silly clothes that don’t fit quite right, the sultry-eyed man on stage really does bear a remarkable resemblance to James.  
  
Kendall watches his hips, awed. Even in a dress, the guy looks like a _guy_ , like James, from the line of his jaw to the planes of his chest to the shape of his thighs where they peek from beneath his skirt. James takes a sip of his shine, a grin perched on his lips. The comparison is obviously making him preen.  
  
Ass.  
  
On stage, Carlos is killing it. He moves his body like it’s boneless. Every jerk of his hips is obscene. Kendall tries to concentrate on that instead of the James-doppelganger, but it doesn’t make him feel better. Kendall sinks further into his seat and moans. “This is so, so wrong. It’s Carlos. In a wig.”  
  
“Pretend it’s someone else,” James replies easily, squeezing Kendall’s thigh. His hand is a firebrand, marking Kendall through his jeans.  
  
“Someone other than Carlos? _In a wig_? I don’t think I can do that.”  
  
One of the other dancers is wearing less than Carlos and the other dude, down to women’s underwear and close to taking that off. Kendall is mortified.  
  
Especially at the end, when he bends over, and all they can see is ass. Despite himself, he asks, “Hey, where are his…?”  
  
“Fashion tape,” James says sagely. “Hurts like a bitch, but keeps it all up front. That’s why they always end with a booty shot.”  
  
“I…yeah, I didn’t need to know that.” Kendall says, and he’s considering asking how _James_ knows that, only, Carlos spots them.  
  
“Hey Desperado.” Carlos hops of stage, wearing an ecstatic grin. He wends his hands around James’s neck, seating himself fully in James’s lap for all of two seconds before he grabs the glass of shine sitting forgotten on the table behind him. He downs it in one go, letting some of the clear liquid trickle down his chin, his throat, glistening across the planes of his chest.  
  
“Carlos,” Kendall warns, spotting a man who could be an inspector eyeing the way that James’s hands rest snug against their friend’s hips. It’s a familiar kind of terror that pounds through his veins, makes his fingers twitch for his gun.  
  
Carlos finds the mark in seconds, murmurs, “Relax, K-dawg. Just having some fun. Besides,” he flicks James fondly in the ear. “This guy is asking for it. What’s with all the leather, urban cowboy?”  
  
“I look good.”  
  
“You look like you’re into bondage.”  
  
“How do you know I’m not?”  
  
Carlos’s eyebrows knit together. Then he shrugs. “Touché.” He wiggles around in James’s lap, shoves a hand down his skirt.  
  
“Please keep your clothes on,” Kendall pleads.  
  
Carlos looks insulted. “No offense, dude, but I’m not giving either of you a lap dance.”  
  
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Kendall replies. “What are you doing?”  
  
“The tape they make us put on our junk is murder.” Carlos eyes Kendall’s glass of shine, and Kendall shoves it forward. “Thanks, man. Water of life.”  
  
“I don’t know about that.”  
  
“Don’t be such a sourpuss.”  
  
“Yeah, Kendall.” James laughs, the sound lost under the pounding rhythm of the radio, Griffin’s work invading their ears. “Don’t be such a _sourpuss_.”  
  
That’s hard for Kendall to do though. The man who might be an inspector _is_ an inspector. He’s at their table, looming. Suspiciously, he asks Carlos, “What are you doing?”  
  
Carlos brightens, shifting in James’s lap. “These are my roommates. We’re going over our shopping list.”  
  
The man scowls. “Couldn’t you do that on your own time?”  
  
“Sure.” Carlos shrugs, licks his bright red lips. “I’m taking fifteen.”  
  
The man doesn’t exactly look pleased, but he backs off. Not far enough to make Kendall’s heart calm down. He clutches at his chest, makes Carlos laugh. “Dude, stop freaking out.”  
  
“Easy for you to say.”  
  
Carlos grins. “I know. What we need here is some more liquor.”  
  
He orders up a round, and then another, and then a third, before he has to go back up on stage, shimmy his hips for other men, their desire a held breath, guilt and want tangled inexplicably together. And through it, James and Kendall drink, round after round, until they’re stumbling to L’Amour past one in the morning, ordering up more shine from Lucy, who delivers with an amused quirk of her eyebrows. She lets James hit on her for a full minute before putting a stop to it, telling him to behave himself and not to get into too much trouble.  
  
And trouble is a definite possibility here. The bar is filled with girls, pretty young things, bones and curves, thin lips and cupid’s bows. Leggy and short, big breasted and small, skin like ivory and lush chocolate and honey. James imparts his wisdom like it’s god given, all sage and full of shit. “The secret with girls is that you’ve got to be bold. Go big or go home.”  
  
“I’d like to go to Mercedes’s now.”  
  
James makes this displeased noise that implies what Kendall has said physically pains him. “Come on, you can’t ditch me for her again.”  
  
Kendall sighs, concedes. He’s drunk enough that the day is a hazy memory, but he still recalls that Mercedes is his boss’s daughter.  
  
Maybe it’s time to cool it.  
  
Just a little.  
  
Kendall’s not going to like, cheat on her or anything. He’s just going to make sure James doesn’t get his pretty face smashed in. He’s kind of an insane drunk. Which he proves, half an hour later.  
  
In the midst of James’s lesson on girls, he hits on the wrong one. She’s a pretty little thing, blonde, with eyes like midwinter, like the snow back home in Minnesota. Kendall almost thinks that’s why James chooses her. Unfortunately, her boyfriend is on them in seconds, up in James’s face, causing a scene.  
  
It’s okay, Kendall thinks, because their guns are checked, James’s sword hanging safely on a hook near the entry of the bar. It’s okay, until it’s not okay. Lucy decides to arbitrate, tells them “Get out before I use my big, shiny boots to kick you out,” and then they’re back on the street, with guns and sword and the boyfriend’s _knife_.  
  
James is baiting him, toying with him like it’s his job. He says that the winter-girl is looking for a _real man_ , that he can’t help it if she’s _not satisfied with what she’s got_ , and he ignores Kendall when he tries to say, “Dude, you’re drunk, and you’re angry and I don’t think this is a good idea.”  
  
“Sure it is.” James says, drawing his sword, and the guy’s eyes get comically wide.  
  
“What the fuck is that?”  
  
“A sword,” Kendall replies calmly, because calm is the only thing he can be right now. If he shows fear, they’re done for. No one wins a fight with weakness, and he still wants to deescalate this situation.  
  
“Does he know how to use it?”  
  
Kendall glances at James, who is brandishing the weapon like it’s a gun, arms braced, stance even. He admits, “I honestly have no idea.”  
  
The man flourishes his knife, holds it out to ward off James and his dumb weapon, and Kendall’s hands are twitching over the handle of his gun, still holstered. The world shrinks down to Kendall, James, and the man. Kendall’s senses sharpen; he can see the knife with dizzy clarity, and the moonlight shimmering across James’s sword like it is a silvered lake, and every ragged rise and fall of their opponent’s chest. He can feel the staleness of the air, the residual heat of the sun still steeped into the concrete, and each and every lump in the asphalt, unsteady under his feet. And he can smell; James, the moonshine, and sweat, bitter, like fear.  
  
All Kendall can think of is how, when they first came to Verona, they swore to protect each other, no matter what. James drew the side of a blade across his hand and red welled to the surface of his flesh, immediate in its reaction. Kendall’s blood was more sluggish, because James was gentler when he cut him, holding his eyes in his hypnotic gaze as the point of the sword pierced his skin. It was done, they were blood brothers, for life.  
  
For life.  
  
For life.  
  
 _For life._  
  
Kendall steps in front of the knife without thinking, protecting all of James’s fleshy bits with his own. There is nothing he wouldn’t do to protect him, even if this is all James’s fault for being a drunken ass. He presses forward into the knife, feeling it nick his skin.  
  
The girl shrieks, tells her boyfriend not to be stupid, tells him to stop before he ends up spending the night in jail, and that’s all it would be really. If he killed Kendall, he would spend a night in jail and then maybe face exile, nothing more.  
  
So many things are illegal in Verona, but murder is not one of them.  
  
“Stop it,” the girl begs with her solstice eyes, and Kendall can feel blood trickling down his throat. His heart is a beat, a rhythm, a pulse that he can feel, that he can taste. He is not afraid, not quite, pliant with liquor and more aware of James at his back, a steadying presence, than the cut on his skin.  
  
It’s just blood.  
  
The man steps away, tells James to watch himself, calls him a _son of a whore_ and the whole fight is about to start all over again, except James has this old ring, a thick silver band with a cross hatch of ridges. He rarely wears it, too small for his fingers, but it’s always on him, strung on a chain around his neck or fiddled between his fingers. Kendall uses it to drag him away, the silver biting into James’s throat.  
  
He can feel the silver press against his palm. It’s cold. Unnaturally so. Kendall refuses to let go of it until they’re home, until James is kicking off his shoes, laughing to himself about the whole debacle. Kendall cups a hand around his cheek and the laughter catches there, sparkling in his eyes like stars.  
  
“You have to be quiet.” He warns, “Logan’s sleeping.”  
  
James presses his fingers to Kendall’s lips, his eyes turning hard and serious for a beat. He agrees, “Hush.” Then he breaks into laughter again, raucous and uncontrollable. He snatches his hand back, licking up and down the length of his index finger like it’s a popsicle. “You taste like moonshine.”  
  
He looks wild, shine reddened eyes and hair all elegantly disheveled. He also looks like sex.  
  
Like maybe he’s had it, or wants it, or plans on having it.  
  
In the still of their bedroom, Logan snoring soft in the corner, James walks towards Kendall with purpose that makes his entire body go taut with longing. When James is like this, drunk and untamed, he glows. It’s hard not to feel blessed with his attention focused solely on Kendall. “I knew you’d be okay, you know. With the knife.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Kendall’s breath hitches. He’s unbuttoning his shirt, fingers stumbling over the holes, the thick buttons.  
  
“Sure. Everyone loves you best,” James says softly. He reaches out, touches Kendall’s lips a second time, lighter, reverent. “You’re everybody’s golden boy. Even mine.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t know how to keep breathing with James so close and intimate and sweet. He feels like he’s perched on the edge of something, and he should think of something to say to put a stop to it, to keep whatever’s happening from going forward. Words are not his friend right now, but James is, James is his friend and his brother and more, something more, something Kendall can’t quite name.  
  
Luckily, he doesn’t have to. James trips back onto his bed, collapses into a heap of laughter that tapers off into the soft sound of his breath, deepening, turning to sleep. Kendall watches him for a long time, touches his mouth and wonders what, if anything, would have happened.

\---

  
Kendall doesn’t come home for a week after that night. He feels embarrassed, even though he didn’t do anything wrong.  
  
He hides beneath the covers of Mercedes’s bed at night and heads straight to the studios when the break of dawn requires him to sneak out. It’s going really well until Mercedes tells him, “It’s been ten days straight. I’m getting sick of your face,” and so Kendall traipses back home, mournful for it. His saving grace turns out to be a visit from Camille, who is sitting on the couch, talking to Logan and Carlos when Kendall walks in.  
  
James is perched on the windowsill, strumming Kendall’s guitar, which Kendall only really has a vague idea how to use. It was a gift from his dad, back when he had a dad. Even before the fall of mankind, the man was a bastard. Kendall’s never been particularly motivated to learn how to use his dumb present.  
  
James, by contrast, is well on his way to mastering the instrument. The song he’s playing is pretty, but melancholic. He keeps playing through Kendall’s entrance, pretends that nothing at all is amiss.  
  
Camille makes room for Kendall the second he walks in, regardless of the glare James aims his way. She stretches her feet across Kendall’s lap and says, “Long time, no see. How is the wicked bitch of the west?”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“She must be better than fine if you’ve been spending every night since June in her bed.”  
  
James misses a chord. It is jarring, hanging in the air for one long discordant moment before dissipating. Kendall says, “She’s pretty great.”  
  
“You guys going to get hitched and have a little brood of your own?”  
  
“As if,” Kendall snorts. He’s not interested in having kids, even if it is his God-given duty or whatever the CC would like. “We both like sex, alright? The only way anything else will be happening is at the end of a shotgun.”  
  
“Don’t jinx yourself,” James mutters darkly. Logan laughs. Carlos smirks.  
  
“God, you’re fucked up,” Camille leans her head against the arm of the couch. “All of you, for thinking that’s funny.”  
  
“It’s true.” James argues. “He should get _out_ while he still can.”  
  
Kendall rolls his eyes. He fights the urge to say anything snarky.  
  
“Don’t know why you’re mad,” Logan tells James, smirking. He recites, “Do your civic duty. Repopulate. Kendall’s just doing what the signs say. Often and repeatedly.”  
  
James makes a face. “Ick.”  
  
Hypocrite.  
  
“You’ve done your own fair share of repopulating,” Logan replies mildly, taking Kendall’s side. “You don’t leave any girls for the rest of us.”  
  
“You’re all pigs,” Camille interjects primly. Kendall can feel the muscles of her calves, gone tight and tense. He thinks maybe the subject should be changed. Immediately.  
  
“Please.” James hops of the windowsill and slings an arm around her shoulders. “Take me as your betrothed and save me from my womanizing ways.”  
  
“Hands off,” Kendall instructs, trying to slip back into friend mode like it’s an easy thing to do. He tells James, “I have dibs.”  
  
Camille rolls her eyes. “The only reason I’m not slicing off any of your valuables right now is because I know you’re joking.”  
  
“Also, illegal,” Carlos adds, wincing and crossing his legs protectively.  
  
Camille just smiles, all sweet and wicked at the same time. “Like that’s ever stopped me.”  
  
Logan’s the only one who doesn’t look amused. Probably because he’s always looking for a reason to prove Camille wrong, ever since the day she dumped him on his ass. It really burns him that she outwits him at every turn.  
  
Seriously he says, “It shouldn’t bother you so much. Society’s practically run by hormones. We’re just doing what the government tells us to.”  
  
“We?” Camille cocks an eyebrow. Lightly she retorts, “Like any girl’s given you the time of day since- _forever_.”  
  
Logan’s cheeks redden. Carlos slaps him on the ass and laughs. Still, he plays the supportive friend. “You _consort_ with just as many men as we do women. It’s not like the reproduction laws aren’t equal opportunity.”  
  
All the humor in Camille’s eyes dies. She bites out, “There’s nothing equal about public hangings for women caught having abortions, or the shame and humiliation that surrounds girls who miscarry, or wait too long to have a kid. There’s nothing at all equal about being forced to care for a baby when you want to hold down a job, a life. No one expects anything at all from _you_.”  
  
Logan’s frowning, itching for a fight, “But-“  
  
“I’m free to sleep with whoever I want, sure. That doesn’t mean I’m free.” Camille gets up, shoving Kendall’s legs off her lap. “Sometimes I can’t believe you guys.”  
  
“Don’t be like that. You’re _the future_ ,” Logan calls after her, purposely being a douchebag, quoting more CC propaganda posters.  
  
He gets a shoe to the face for his trouble. Camille yells back, “Do I look like I want to be the future?”  
  
She storms out of the apartment, all fire and brimstone and righteous anger. Carlos asks, “What did _I_ say?”  
  
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. He knew this conversation was going to be trouble. He should have put a stop to it the second it started. “They just passed the new law, the one entitling the guard to prosecute women who are childless at twenty. Camille’s only got…what, two more years?”  
  
“Prosecute? Persecute, more like,” James slaps his hand against the sound hole of the guitar. The strings twang under his fingers. “A kid will destroy her career.”  
  
“How- how do you even know that?” Logan splutters, because he’s usually their current affairs guy.  
  
“I’m in Gustavo’s personal detail, and Griffin’s on the board.” Kendall shrugs fluidly. “I hear things.”  
  
“Well. Shit,” Logan curses. “I fucked that up. I should go apolo-“  
  
Something hits the side of the house with a thunk. Logan blanches. “Is she throwing knives?”  
  
“I’d save the apology. Unless you want to play human dartboard. _I’ll_ talk to her,” James volunteers.  
  
Kendall frowns. “Maybe it’s better if I do that.”  
  
James bristles. “Why?”  
  
“I’ve never tried to get into her pants.”  
  
“I’m not interested in Camille like that.” Kendall gives James a dubious look and he cocks his head to the side. “Anymore. Fine.” James slumps into the seat Kendall vacated, crosses his arms and his ankles, scuffed boots on the coffee table. “Go.”  
  
Kendall does. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, filters rays of light through holes and cracks and crevices to shine down on a few blessed locales. There is an aura of gold around the buildings he can see, tapering into the encroaching blue-gray. It looks like the city is on fire.  
  
Kendall almost wishes it were.  
  
He finds Camille sitting in the alley outside their crashpad, thumbing the edge of one of her knives. She looks terrifying, and strong, a maelstrom of rage and wanting and primal urges beneath her delicate exterior. Kendall settles down beside her, stares at the brick façade of the wall across from him. He says, “Logan’s an ass. Carlos too.” At Camille’s look, he adds, “And James. …And me. Sorry. Want to go throw water balloons at Hawk’s border patrol?”  
  
Camille smirks. Then she schools her face. “I see what you’re doing and I don’t appreciate it. It doesn’t make what you guys said okay.”  
  
“No. It really, really doesn’t,” Kendall agrees. “And you don’t have to forgive us.”  
  
“What am I supposed to do?”  
  
“You’re supposed to do whatever you feel like doing. It’s not my business,” Kendall tells her. “You know what is? Water balloons.”  
  
“Don’t treat me like I need to be handled.”  
  
“Hey, I’m not.” Kendall holds up his hands. “I’m just worried about you.”  
  
Camille looks away. She doesn’t want his pity or his concern, and Kendall gets that; he really does. Still. He can’t just leave her out here, moping and miserable. He thinks about bringing up water balloons again, but obviously that isn’t working. He decides not to press the subject. Fooling around isn’t going to fix this.  
  
He’s not sure that anything can.  
  
Finally, Camille begins, “I never dreamed about growing up and being a mom. I _never_ wanted to get married.”  
  
“What did you want?”  
  
“To train orcas. At Sea World. My dad had this old VHS of Free Willy, and a black and white TV and a generator…” she trails off. “I wonder if there are even any killer whales left out there.”  
  
“The ocean’s a big place.”  
  
“It is. Then I wanted to be an actress, and then…Two years, Kendall. I’ve only got two years. Less than.” She doesn’t bury her head in her hands, but the lines of her body are tired, exhausted. She looks like she wants to cry, but she doesn’t, won’t in front of Kendall. Not ever. That’s just not who Camille is.  
  
Tentatively, he asks, “What are you going to do?”  
  
“Evade them for as long as I can. I’ll have to forge papers…do you think I can pass for sixteen?”  
  
“I think you can pass for fourteen, when the time comes,” Kendall says. “And I’ll help. We all will.”  
  
“Logan?”  
  
“Logan’s a dick. He doesn’t mean to be. You hurt him really badly, and pain makes people lash out.”  
  
Camille stiffens. “That doesn’t excuse acting like an ignorant, petty jackass.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Kendall agrees. “He’ll figure that out eventually.”          
  
Hopefully.  
  
“Doesn’t mean I’ll forgive him for it.”  
  
“No one’s asking you to. I’m not going to apologize for them. Us. We’re morons. Like I said before, you do whatever you need to make this okay.”  
  
“Nothing about this is _okay_. You take away a person’s basic human rights and what exactly do they have left?”  
  
The sunset is fading into night, darkness triumphing at last. Kendall takes a deep breath, confesses, “I don’t know.”  
  
He’s not good with this stuff, not great with trying to fight something he doesn’t completely understand. Certainty in her voice, Camille says, “And you won’t do anything about it.”  
  
What can he do? What is there that Kendall can possibly do to stop Verona or the world from crumbling? “You want me to?”  
  
“I want to get the hell out of this city, before it burns. Because it will. One day, all of this will be ashes.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t disagree.  
  
Mostly because Camille’s right.


	4. Your Body Follows Through, Scary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strains of music from the party pierce at Kendall’s ears, but he can’t hear them, can’t process them, because James is a melody all his own, from the percussion drum of his heart beat to the wind instrument of his breath to the little ahahahs of his voice. When they break for air, James mouths over his throat, a wet slide emphasized by his tongue and his teeth when he nips and sucks. He marks Kendall with bruises, growls mine after deliberating over the hollow beneath Kendall’s jaw, and he feels tender and raw and ridiculously turned on. He groans, and it sounds like the ringing baritone of an organ pipe, jarred and loud.

Mercedes is naked.  
  
Almost.  
  
Kendall’s got the shape of one of her perfect breasts cupped in his palm, his other hand gripping her hip while he drags his dick painstakingly slow across the lacy cloth of her black panties. He can feel her, damp heat, and her thighs press into his hips. Her fingernails are digging into the muscle of his shoulder blades, her nipple standing at attention beneath his thumb, and he’s in the middle of imagining how easy it would be to just nudge the fabric aside and fuck into her, wet and tight and all for him.  
  
That’s about when the door creaks open.  
  
Not that Kendall hears it. He’s still lost in the smell of Mercedes’s hair and the heat between her legs, wondering if the mood will dissipate if he takes her panties off with his teeth. Mercedes is the one who sees the outline of light spilling in from the hallway, the one who gasps, “Daddy?”  
  
And Kendall is all for dirty talk, but he’s always found the Electra Complex thing a little weird. He mumbles, “That’s not hot, babe.”  
  
She shoves him off of her, grabbing for the comforter. Clutching it close to her chest, she hisses, “No you idiot. It’s my dad.”  
  
Kendall’s head turns so quick he might have the first honest case of whiplash America has seen since gas stations went out of business.  
  
Griffin is wrapped in a terrycloth robe that’s plusher than anything that Kendall has ever seen outside of this ridiculous house, with its extravagant wealth. He’s tall and intimidating and every bit as scary as Kendall remembers, but he also looks tired, like Christmas decorations left out well past Easter. For the briefest of moments, Kendall considers his gun, only feet away on Mercedes’s bedside table.  
  
He’s not crazy enough to do it.  
  
Just barely.  
  
Griffin shades his eyes with his hand. His warrior-frame is shadowed and dark, and he lets out a long sigh. He announces, “This is unexpected.”  
  
Red is creeping up Kendall’s chest, staining his ears and his cheeks, but Griffin is practical. He says, “I’m going to let you two put clothes on and try to erase this emotionally scarring visual from my mind. Come down to the dining room when you’re not naked. We’ll talk. …It will be awkward.”  
  
As soon as he leaves, Mercedes gathers up her nightgown, muttering, “Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Shit.”  
  
Kendall agrees with the sentiment, but his throat has gone dry. He doesn’t think he could form words if he wanted to. He shimmies into his jeans and starts a scavenger hunt for his shirt, that stupid Hawaiian number that James gave him.  
  
James is going to murder him if he dies.  
  
It’s a weird thought to have, but it keeps Kendall occupied all the way down the stairs he’s only braved once or twice before, with Mercedes in the middle of the day; when Griffin was definitely, certainly, most assuredly out and there was no danger of getting caught.  
  
Now they’re trapped.  
  
He keeps imagining a rope tightening around his neck. He can taste fear in the back of his throat, sharp and wet, like he’s swallowed sewage. _Don’t pussy out_ , he tells himself. Kendall can’t run away screaming and leave Mercedes to face this alone. No matter how tempting it sounds.  
  
In the ornate dining room, there is tea, all set out in dainty china cups with a blue pattern around the rim. Griffin, sitting at the head of a long mahogany table, sees Kendall looking and says, “My ex-wife picked out the pattern. We divorced before the Fall. I think she was in Florida when it all went down.”  
  
He says it conversationally, like he’s not actually hiding a shotgun under his chair, and Kendall’s not sure if it’s a good sign or not.  
  
“Is she okay?” Kendall asks Mercedes, because he can’t actually bring himself to meet her father’s eyes, and Mercedes shrugs.  
  
“She was ex number six. Who cares?”  
  
Griffin takes a sip of his tea. Kendall slides into the chair Griffin indicates for him and sniffs his, wondering if that’s a whiff of poison he detects, or just chamomile. Mercedes sits more rigid than he’s ever seen her, back ramrod straight, hands primly folded in her lap.  
  
She won’t even look at her teacup.  
  
Griffins begins, “I’m thinking January.”  
  
“January?” Kendall repeats numbly.  
  
“Mmm,” Griffin hums. “Any sooner and we’ll be sending the wrong message; we don’t want anyone to think my daughter’s a strumpet.” He reaches across the table and pats her stomach. Mercedes frowns. “Any later and who knows? We might end up with evidence of the same. I trust this hasn’t been going on long?”  
  
Griffin’s gaze turns sharp, and Kendall wishes he could melt into his chair, let his fear turn him liquid. Instead he tries to maintain eye contact, to look braver than he feels.  
  
“That’s not any of your business, daddy. And what are you talking about?” Mercedes huffs, finally deigning to take a sip of tea.  
  
“Making the best out of a situation that isn’t exactly ideal.” Griffin folds his hands together, forever a businessman. He looks every bit as stern and authoritative in his robe as he did the day of Kendall’s interview. His eyes are steel. “You two are getting married.”  
  
“Married?” Mercedes chokes on chamomile, spitting half of it onto the table and Kendall.  
  
“Married?” Kendall’s mind goes blank. He can feel a stray droplet of tea roll down his cheek, but he leaves it, lets it trace a line down to his jaw, his neck, and settle in the hollow above his collarbone.  
  
“Daddy, marriage is a little _drastic_.”  
  
“Marriage is the only solution,” Griffin replies. “Half the country’s in craters. You two are lucky you even have the option-“  
  
“Option? Forcing a wedding isn’t a choice,” Mercedes says, slamming her hand down on the table. The china quakes. Kendall bunches his fingers in the leg of his jeans.  
  
“It’s the only choice you have.”  
  
Mercedes crosses her arms. Griffin’s gaze is burning, but so is hers. Kendall tries to remember that her stubbornness is a thing he _likes_ about her.  
  
He can’t breathe.  
  
“There’s no law that I have to marry every boy I sleep with.”  
  
Griffin’s eyes narrow, candlelight flickering against his obsidian pupils. He looks like a demon, dressed in red, prepared to maim and torture. “Why not this one? You turned down Dak, you turned down the last suitor-“  
  
“Dak was only with me for a _promotion_ , and Jett is a pompous idiot,” Mercedes snaps. Her crimson nails dig into the teacup, talon-like.  
  
“Exactly. This boy is employed by me, chosen by you. I imagine you feel… _something_ for him, heavens know why. You’ve only got a year to go before….” Griffin’s voice turns firm and he says, “There are twice as many men as women in this city.”  
  
“So?” Mercedes snaps.  
  
“So, I won’t have them fighting over you when the time comes. At least this way…It’s a mercy, Mercy.” Griffin pats her hand, but she snatches it away and looks like she’s seriously considering throwing her tea in his face. He says, “This isn’t a negotiation.”  
  
Mercedes’s chair screams as she shoves away from the table. She’s on her feet, saying, “You can’t force me to get married.”  
  
“I can do whatever I want. I’m Arthur Griffin.” Mercedes’s face begins to turn red, a kind of fury that Kendall has never seen creeping up the line of her delicate throat. Griffin looks at Kendall. “You. It would be wise if you leave. I expect you back here in the morning.”  
  
“Gustavo-“  
  
“Gustavo works for me. He can wait.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t exactly plan on abandoning ship, but the next thing he knows he is out of his seat and Griffin is guiding him straight to the front door while Mercedes narrowly misses both their heads with that fine china teacup. Chamomile splashes against Kendall’s shoulders, soaking through his shirt, and there might be a cut from a stray shard on his face.  
  
He wants to ask if Griffin’s really, actually serious, and he wants to ask if Mercedes is going to be okay. But he doesn’t ask any of that, because Griffin slams the door in Kendall’s face.  
  
Kendall groans. Why is he such an idiot?  
  
He just assumed that they wouldn’t get caught. He felt invincible, and now it kind of sucks hard to realize that he’s really, really not. He touches his hand against the marbled wall behind the trellis. It’s cold, like a cage, like a coffin.  
  
Kendall is so screwed.  
  
On the way home, he focuses on the pastel houses on the main drag; the pink of a wilted rose petal, the orangey saffron of corrosion and mold, the lavender of corpse skin and the clouded indigo of the smog in the sky. A broken red brick shingle crunches under his foot. He can see the rusty color crumbling beneath his sneaker.  
  
He can also see that there is a dead girl on the corner of the street. He nearly misses her, except for the shingle redirecting his gaze. And the smell. Rotting meat is kind of a particular stench, a sickly sweet thing that catches in a person’s nose and won’t leave, not ever.  
  
It haunts Kendall’s dreams, sometimes. The girl will too.  
  
A bird’s nest is growing inside of her ribcage. He realizes this must have been the woman who was executed a while back, the spectacle he refused to attend. She does not have much skin left to rot, half mummified from the sun, half scavenged by the gulls. Kendall does not look at the awkward angles of her limbs, the mottled sheen of what flesh remains or the way her ribs warp whenever the birds in the nest move.  
  
He does not look, but he sees all the same. The moonlight is too bright, and the night is too clear. It’s not all that late yet.  
  
Maybe that was his mistake, getting loud and sweaty and obscene when night hadn’t completely blanketed the city.  
  
Like the dead girl, Kendall tries not to focus on it, because when he does, all he can feel is this overpowering hysteria that feels like it might burst from his skin, punch holes through the marrow of his bones and spill out into the world like a scream.  
  
It’s just a wedding.  
  
It’s just a ring. But it feels like more than that, like a weighty shackle that will tie him to Mercedes and Griffin for the rest of his life when really, he wants more than this. Even if knowing it's impossible, Kendall’s been holding on to the vague idea that one day he might be able to find something else, to be more than one of Griffin’s dumb henchmen. The idea has lingered beneath all his false bravado, all his fatalistic intent, bolstered by his mother’s voice in the back of his head urging him to _dream_. Kendall’s better than grunt work. He’s better than this whole damn city, and so are James, Carlos, and Logan. Up until now, he refused to let any of it drag any of them down. But if he commits himself to Mercedes, he won’t be able to leave.  
  
Not ever. Through the whole damn collapse of civilization, loyalty is one of the only virtues he’s been able to hold onto. He’s not planning on letting that go, no matter how unhappy it makes him.  
  
The guys are going to kill him.  
  
 _James_ is going to kill him.  
  
Kendall swallows and walks on. He presses his fingertips into the curve of his eyelids and wonders how bad this is going to be. When they were little, before things went bad, James was his world. Kendall didn’t really befriend Carlos until the first grade, when they got involved in peewee hockey, because things had only just begun to sour, and Kendall’s mom and Carlos’s dad still thought peewee hockey was something worth pursuing. Logan didn’t move to town until the third grade, when his family was trying to escape the chaos in the South.  
  
Before them, Kendall only had _James_ , a million different versions of his smile and his laugh and all of his bizarre poses. He knew every facet of James’s stubbornness and every dream that flitted through his head. And Kendall always thought he’d be able to make every single one come true.  
  
The Fall changed things, stole away people they all loved and forged bonds of trust and devotion that ran deeper than anything a normal friendship could have been. It changed James _,_ turned him from this pretty little boy who wanted to grow up to be a popstar into a renegade, this badass rebel without a clue that Kendall doesn’t always understand or agree with. But impossibly, Kendall still feels like the same little boy he was at age five, who wants to give James everything he ever wanted, and who is scared to death of disappointing the coolest kid he knows.  
  
There is a song in the air, drifting down from one of the open windows. Kendall isn’t sure if that’s city housing or not, but he isn’t going to judge anyone for living where they’re not supposed to. He listens, hums along a little. The music sits inside his chest, melts into his heart, and makes him feel just the tiniest bit better.  
  
That’s what music is all about, after all; lifting a person up when they’ve crashed so low they have nowhere left to go.  
  
Kendall gets home when the moon has peaked in the sky, starlight lancing through a lazy drift of clouds so dark and gray that they blend into the night. His trek up the stairs to their crappy squatter’s hole of an apartment is weary, and all that Kendall really wants is to sleep for a thousand years.  
  
He does not want to deal with James, and yet another of his stupid dates.  
  
James keeps bringing home girls, all shapes, all sizes, like he’s trying to impress upon Kendall the importance of variety, and how it’s the spice of life. This one’s got alabaster skin that must be hard as hell to maintain in the middle of California and silvery blonde hair that disappears into the collar of James’s oversized t-shirt. She pads across the living room with a coy smile, bends down, and okay, she’s not wearing anything under the shirt. All Kendall can see at the top of the stairs is the muscle of her thighs and the shape of her ass as she dips in and kisses James.  
  
He tries not to gag, but a tiny, displeased noise erupts from his mouth.  
  
The girl shoots up like a rocket, but all James does is kiss the girl’s inner thigh, peering out at Kendall’s shadowy form from between her legs.  
  
Kendall’s breath speeds up. He tries to act casual, kicking off his shoes and saying, “Honey, I’m home.”  
  
There is this beat, and then two, where James doesn’t move, his lips still pressed to skin, his eyes still glued to Kendall. Then he pulls back and says cheerfully, “Just in time to meet my new friend. Isn’t she great?”  
  
James grins and smacks the girl’s ass. The sound echoes in the still of the apartment. Kendall walks up next to them both, sizing up the blonde with her tiny frame and her regal features. She smiles, too chipper for how Kendall feels, and hops onto James’s lap.  
  
Kendall sighs.  
  
“Nifty,” he says, less sarcastic and more exhausted. He’s not exactly in the mood for any of this.   
  
James’s expression softens, melts into a more familiar kind of worry. “Everything okay?”  
  
“Sure.” Kendall shrugs. “Magnificent.”  
  
He wants to tell James everything, but he can’t, not with James’s bimbo perched on his lap, and not without Logan or Carlos listening in. This isn’t a conversation Kendall plans on having to repeat. He pulls away, intent on stumbling into the bedroom and crashing for good, until morning and the harsh glare of sunlight and his impending doom.  
  
James grabs his wrist, finger tracing one of the blue veins beneath his skin. Kendall shivers into it, ticklish, tingly. James says, “If you need to talk…”  
  
“Hey, you’re on a date,” Kendall replies with the fakest of fake upbeat attitudes. “Don’t let me interrupt.”  
  
“I, uh.” James looks guiltily at the girl, his _great_ girl, and decides, “She was just leaving.”  
  
“James, don’t-“ Kendall protests, but James goes through the whole tricky process of kicking his date out _without_ making her hate him. Kendall has no idea how James has managed to perfect that whole routine. Every time he tries it he ends up with a drink to the face, or worse. All James gets is a kiss to the cheek and a coy _see you soon_?  
  
Once she’s gone, James buckles up the front of his jeans and scooches over on the couch.  
  
Kendall wouldn’t have minded if he had left himself all rumpled and untucked. He looked good that way, pulled at something bittersweet in the depths of Kendall’s stomach.  
  
“What’s _wrong_?” James enunciates, patting the sofa. Kendall slumps into the space, soaking up the heat James has left behind. He pulls his knees into his chest, and James takes hold of one of his bare feet, rubbing the sole.  
  
“That tickles,” Kendall says. James rolls his eyes. He stops rubbing, but he doesn’t let go, his big palm wrapped around Kendall’s foot, their shoulders pressed together.  
  
Kendall focuses on the points of heat and wonders if maybe he should tell James now. It’s not like waiting until tomorrow will make it all better. Just.  
  
Day makes it easier to face things, sometimes. And if Kendall says something now, James will stop touching him. He’ll go chase down that girl, Kendall thinks, and he doesn’t want that. The idea of it makes his muscles pinch.  
  
Kendall’s pissed and upset and hiding it all beneath his tired smile, and right now all he wants is this; the dim light of their living room and the points of electricity where James is touching him. He asks, “Can I tell you in the morning?”  
  
James’s forehead furrows, but he says, “You know I’m always here.”  
  
Kendall nods, but inside he’s worried. How does James define always?  
  
Kendall supposes he’ll find out tomorrow.

\---

  
Mercedes doesn’t manage to talk Griffin out of anything, and Kendall feels stupid for hoping that she would. He spends his morning sitting stiffly at her side while Griffin discusses his _six month timeline_.  
  
“The engagement party comes first,” he says, and Mercedes nods along. She smiles, even.  
  
It does not reach her eyes.  
  
Afterwards, Kendall trudges back home with heavy feet. He’s got an _engagement party_ at the end of the week. Now he has no choice but to tell the guys how badly he’s fucked up. This is going to be all over Verona by nightfall, and if Kendall doesn’t break the news to them, he’ll get the silent treatment until the fucking wedding.  
  
It’s that weird in-between time when Logan is just back from the apothecary, but Carlos hasn’t run off to the cabaret, and they’re all together. Just like it used to be.  
  
Right down to how Carlos is about to blow something up on their kitchen counter. Logan is teaching him how to slop together some kind of recipe over a homemade Bunsen burner, and whatever it is bubbles wildly in a giant steel pot. James is watching from the sofa, a safe distance away, amusement quirking his lips and tilting his eyes.  
  
He lights up when Kendall walks in the door and says, “You’re home early!”  
  
Kendall can’t manage a smile in return. Carlos is here. Logan is here. James is here.  
  
No time like the present.  
  
“So.” Kendall looks at his friends. They stare back, expectant. Carlos’s hand hovers in the air, a glass jar of some herb or another perched in his fingers. Logan’s got his arm crossed, a wrinkled recipe paper clutched in one hand. James is splayed out lazy and comfortable on the couch. His eyes are the color of jasper, and Kendall still really doesn’t want to tell him.  
  
He doesn’t want those eyes to turn hard at the edges.  
  
He doesn’t want James to hate him.  
  
Kendall takes a deep breath. “I’m getting married. Uh. To Mercedes.”  
  
He wants silence. He wants the dramatic pause that’s supposed to meet announcements with this kind of gravity. Instead, James’s reaction is immediate. “What?”  
  
“Griffin caught us. Together,” Kendall explains, like that part isn’t obvious. “Now we’re getting hitched. The, um, engagement party is this weekend. At Griffin’s. There will be champagne.”  
  
Because real, legitimate alcohol that wasn’t cooked up in a bathtub will obviously make everything better.  
  
Except not. James is still staring at Kendall like maybe he’s threatened to stab him in the back with his own sword. Emphatically, he says, “You can’t.”  
  
Slowly, Kendall replies, “I don’t have any choice.”  
  
Carlos, ever the peacemaker, jumps in to save the day. “It could be worse. Mercedes is a babe, and you like her, right?”  
  
“I guess. I mean, no, yeah. Of course I like her. Just, you know. Marriage. It’s a little…soon,” Kendall decides diplomatically. “It could be good. Maybe.”  
  
Carefully, Logan uncrosses his arms. “Come on. Do you really want to marry Mercedes?”  
  
“Not particularly,” Kendall enunciates, holding his hands out in a helpless gesture. “But what am I supposed to do? Griffin will fire me if I break his daughter’s heart. Or worse. Probably worse.”  
  
“How do you know you’re going to break her heart? You’re not exactly a catch,” Logan snipes and now his eye is half on the yellowed recipe paper Carlos is working off of.  
  
“I’ll have you know I’m a total stud,” Kendall says. He can’t exactly keep a straight face while doing it. Kendall plops on the couch next to James and  buries his sardonic, slightly maniacal grin in one of Logan’s dumb, musty throw pillows. He ignores the way that James flinches away and asks, “What am I supposed to do?”  
  
“Nut up,” Carlos suggests sunnily.  
  
“Tell Mercedes,” James says, an uncharacteristically quiet edge to his voice. “Maybe she can help.”  
  
“I can’t tell Mercedes I don’t want to marry her.”  
  
“Really? You’re the one who thinks honesty is like, the one true path or whatever.”  
  
Logan wrinkles his nose. “There’s honest and there’s cruel. Mercedes is…vain…loud, spoiled….”  
  
“Rich,” Carlos throws in.  
  
James doesn’t say anything at all. Kendall nudges his knee with his foot, but James just scoots even further away. Kendall’s shoulders slump and he hugs the pillow close to his chest. “She’s nice. Mercedes is nice. And I have to get married eventually, right?”  
  
Carlos shrugs noncommittally and turns back to his recipe. Logan mouths _civic duty_ and nods.  
  
But James.  
  
James does not look pleased. “So love, what? Doesn’t even matter?”  
  
“It matters. Of course it matters,” Kendall feels something hot and angry spike through his chest. Has James already completely forgotten how devastated he was by Jo?  
  
James’s eyes blaze. He is livid, and Kendall knew he would be, but geez. It’s not like Kendall is exactly super pleased about the prospect of his impending nuptials either. What does James expect him to do about it?  
  
He watches his friend hop to his feet and gather up his shit.  
  
“I’m going out.” James says, his leather jacket dangling over his arm.  
  
“Where?”  
  
“What does it matter to you? You’ve got a wedding to plan.” James storms out of the apartment, crashes down the stairs, and slams the front door. Kendall winces.  
  
He says to Logan and Carlos, “It won’t change _us_ , I swear.”  
  
“Kendall,” Logan says, over the top of the billowing gray cloud Carlos has just created. “I don’t know if you get to promise that.”

  
\---

  
James brings home a girl. Kendall knows because he wakes up in the middle of the night, sprawled across one of the two moldy old futons the guys share, Logan tucked into his side. His mouth is dry, and he has this idle idea that he’ll grab some water from one of the plastic jugs they keep next to the useless kitchen sink.  
  
He disentangles himself from Logan’s baby-lemur grip, used to it from a hundred nights on the road, where they all slept piled together like puppies. That’s when he sees James and his date, tangled and naked on the ratty old sofa in the living room.  
  
Kendall stares at the long, golden line of James’s spine, dimpled where bone protrudes for a long, long time.  
  
James brought the girl home on purpose.  
  
To hurt him.  
  
Kendall understands that with a kind of cold certainty that he doesn’t actually understand at all, that he can’t figure out, because why would James do that?  
  
And why is it working? Kendall feels like yanking the girl up by the hair and throwing her out. There is heat under his skin, an itch he can’t shake, can’t reach. Almost against his will, he reaches out and trails a finger along the lean lines of James’s back. James shivers and arches into the girl, sleepily snuggling into her neck. Into her throat, he mumbles something Kendall can’t quite hear.  
  
Kendall says, “You’re so dumb sometimes.”  
  
Come to think of it, that probably applies to the both of them.

  
\---

  
The engagement party is held in Griffin’s ballroom. Because his house is so fucking big it has a _ballroom_. The guys show up late- confused by their bowties and fancy suits and what exactly to do with a cummerbund- tumbling over each other like puppies, trying to make it in the entrance first.  
  
James wins.  
  
“Classy place.” He whistles, taking in the Rococo architecture, the gilded ceiling and the shining, ornate chandelier. There are mirrors on every wall, throwing Kendall’s pale reflection back at him from every angle.  
  
“Least you’re marrying up,” Carlos agrees, swinging an arm around Kendall’s shoulders. He nuzzles his neck, all happy, open affection, regardless of who might be watching. James shoves him back by his forehead, and Logan ropes his arms around Carlos’s waist.  
  
“Mind your manners.”  
  
“Don’t want anyone to think you’re a sodomizer,” a voice adds cheerfully.  
  
Dak.  
  
Fuck.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Kendall asks, shifting from foot to foot. His dress shoes are too tight, even though Griffin’s private tailor outfitted him personally. He feels like a little boy, playing dress up. A string quartet strikes up a jaunty tune. It makes Kendall’s skin thrum.  
  
“I’m the greeter. Greetings.” Dak gives them a cheesy formal bow. “Congrats on scoring the boss-man’s daughter.”  
  
It doesn’t sound malicious, but Kendall can’t help taking it that way. He just really doesn’t like Dak. At all. “Thanks.”  
  
“I like you, Knight. You’re spunky.” Dak grins this supserstar grin that probably would have landed him in the movies, if there were still anyone making ‘em. Then that smile turns razor sharp, and he adds, “But I do what I’m told. Just a heads up…If Griffin ever wants me to cut you down, I’m going to do it.”  
  
Dak pats Kendall on the shoulder like they’re friends now, when mostly Kendall wants to pistol whip him across the face. If only his gun hadn’t been checked at the door by some Councilmen acting as security. He grits his teeth and tries to remember that he’s at a high profile event.  
  
Being thrown in his own honor.  
  
“I’d behave yourself with Mercedes. Oh, hey, it’s Kelly.” Dak brushes by the lot of them and goes to _greet_ Kelly.  
  
Logan says, “That guy is a douchebag.”  
  
“Yep.” Kendall pops his lips together and blows out. This is going to be a long night.  
  
There are more people gathered in the big ballroom than Kendall has ever seen outside of the flea markets, and there is not a dirty cheek amongst them. The women are butterflies, dressed in jewel toned ball gowns, and the men wear tuxes and suits that look like they walked right off a silver screen.  
  
And back to those women, man, Kendall has never seen so many in one place. Carlos and Logan’s eyes are bugging out of their heads, and even James looks relatively interested, like he hasn’t probably already nailed half of the ladies there.  
  
“Guys, behave,” Kendall hisses, already sensing that it’s a necessary warning.  
  
Coolly, Camille drawls, “Like they even know how.”  
  
Kendall turns on his foot, nearly tripping over the hem of his slacks. He didn’t hear her approach, but that’s not exactly new. “Camille.”  
  
What is new are the heels. She’s wearing a dress the color of azaleas, bright pink with a lot of beading and sparkle. She is gorgeous. James, Logan, and Carlos rush over one another to say hi.  
  
Camille laughs. “Hey, boys. Mind if I talk to Kendall?”  
  
“M’lady,” James steps back, all gallant and dorky.  
  
Logan glares. He says brightly, “You look-“  
  
“I’m not talking to you,” Camille replies. She’s still pissed about that night a few weeks back, which, whatever, she has every right to be. Kendall allows her to lead him a few feet away, towards the bar set up near the front of the room. He ignores the distraught look on Logan’s face and engulfs Camille in a hug. “Don’t you clean up nice?”  
  
“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” Camille asks shrewdly.  
  
“It’s that obvious?” Kendall fiddles with his collar. Camille reaches out and stills his hands.  
  
“Oh yeah. Want to back out?”  
  
“I would if I could,” Kendall replies, darting nervous glances left and right.  
  
“What’s the worst Griffin can do? Kill you? You could run. Get out of the city. I’ll help.”  
  
Kendall allows himself a minute to consider the idea, but he knows what his answer has to be. “What’s the point? If I do this, if I marry her, we’ll be set for life. We won’t have to worry about food or protection or- I can take care of James and Carlos and Logan. I can take care of you.”  
  
“I don’t need to be taken care of,” Camille replies automatically. “And that’s not a good enough reason to commit yourself to this. If you’re not going to be happy, what’s the point?”  
  
“The point is, we’ve got a life here. I’m not going to drag any of you down with me.”  
  
“Kendall-“  
  
“Look, we can’t do this here. Let’s just-“ Kendall wends an arm around her shoulders and guides her back to the boys. “Try to smile.”  
  
Logan opens his mouth, but before he can get anything else, Camille extricates herself from Kendall’s grip.  “James. Want to dance?”  
  
Camille tugs on his arm and pulls him out onto the floor. James has the nerve to look a little nervous about it.  
  
When they first came to Verona, Logan and James fell all over their own feet trying to attract Camille’s attention. And Logan was the one who did it, who pulled her in with his schoolboy charm and his dimpled smile. It annoyed the hell out of James, who is not used to losing. On the floor, his hands settle on Camille’s hips and he looks acutely uncomfortable. So does she, for that matter. There has always been this thing between them, this tension that makes the air shimmer whenever they’re close. Kendall wonders if he thinks he’s got a second chance, now.  
  
The idea makes him feel vaguely sick, like most things involving James do these days. He focuses on Logan, who is staring wistfully at Camille’s back. “Sometime I’m going to learn how to act like a human being around her again.”  
  
Carefully, Kendall states, “That’s probably a good goal.”  
  
“I miss her.”  
  
“You’ve got a shitty way of showing it.”  
  
“I know. Trust me, I know.” He shoves his hands in the pockets of his slacks while Carlos pats his shoulder sympathetically. “Drinks?”  
  
“I’d love to,” Kendall says. “But, uh. I think I found my date.”  
  
Mercedes is across the room, clad in this strapless ivory confection of tulle and crystal beading. She is beautiful, because she is always beautiful. Kendall knows that’s what got him into trouble in the first place. He crosses the room and wraps his arms around her shoulders. A little awkwardly, he says, “You, uh. You look really pretty.”  
  
He’s not sure how to act around Mercedes now that their relationship is supposed to mean something other than a good time; friendship and sex and laughter. He cares about her, loves her even, but he doesn’t _know_ her. Not really.  
  
Not well enough that he’s ready to commit to her for the rest of his life.  
  
“Oh, do I? Want me to bend over and curtsy?” Mercedes murmurs, flipping up her skirt until Kendall can see the white of her thighs.  
  
“Hey, hey. Later,” he murmurs, laughing a little, because at the very least, this crazy girl knows how to defuse a tense situation, quick. She turns in the circle of his arms.  
  
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She says into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Hey, hey.” Kendall grazes his lips against her cheek, and she looks up, meets his eyes. “It’s not your fault.”  
  
“I was careless-“  
  
“We were both careless,” Kendall corrects. “You didn’t force me into anything. Don’t try to take all the blame.”  
  
James and Camille dance by them, Camille’s long, bright skirt billowing out like the petals of a tigerlily, and Kendall catches a whiff of James’s cologne. His stomach knots. James sees Kendall staring and waves, obnoxiously, behind Camille’s back.  
  
She punches him in the arm and he winces.  
  
“Dance?” Kendall suggests to Mercedes, because they can’t just stand there, holding each other all night. They have to at least pretend this is what they want.  
  
Mercedes shrugs and counters, “Drink?”  
  
That sounds like a way better plan. Kendall and Mercedes join Carlos in Logan in downing shots of honeyed vodka at the bar, drinking flutes of champagne and mixed cocktails that taste like sunlight. The liquor makes their feet move, and then Mercedes finally accepts Kendall’s invitation, one song after another that he learns the steps to as he goes. They shimmy and shake their way through throngs of powerful, important people, wave to Griffin and his rich friends as they spin past. They switch partners, and Kendall meets some of Mercedes’s lackeys; girls he’s vaguely familiar with from long summer nights whiled away at L’Amour.  
  
Nearly five songs in, a gleeful tantarella turns into something different, a Parisian waltz that is too slow for the adrenaline in Kendall’s bloodstream. He slips to the right, a graceless chassé meant to extricate him from the grip of one of Mercedes’s overeager friends, but all it does is deliver him straight into James’s arms.  
  
“Going somewhere?” James has got him trapped like a wiggly puppy or a fidgety toddler; sometimes Kendall forgets that James has always been stronger than him. He laughs when Kendall tries to shove him away, pulls him close and intimate, and a few of the men dancing by with their dates snicker and tell him that he’s going to make such _a pretty wife_.  
  
“Get off,” Kendall tells him, scared, scared, always scared of something he doesn’t entirely understand. He doesn’t have any reason to be afraid.  
  
He’s never had a reason to be afraid, not of the hangman’s rope when there are so many other things in this world to fear. But sometimes he looks at James, and from the gold-auburn light that catches in his hair to the color of his eyes, like the green-black-brown of apache tears, Kendall feels nothing but panic.   
  
James pulls him in tighter, twirls him around to sweet notes that reverberate in Kendall’s chest and make him feel like his bones have turned to ivory keys that the musicians can play just as well as the cello or the viola. Everywhere James touches creates electricity across the surface of Kendall’s skin, and that is all he is, anymore, electric currents and hollow bones that sing, sing, sing,  
  
James and the music make his whole body sing.  
  
His heart kicks up in his chest, echoing the music, the footsteps of the dancers, the rhythm of James’s breath. There is this roaring sound in his ears, waves, or the sound of a jet engine, but it makes no sense because there hasn’t been a plane in the sky for years. James presses a hand low on Kendall’s spine, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of his slacks. He guides Kendall in a circle, taking the lead. Around them, the most powerful men in Verona are laughing like it’s all a big joke, but Kendall’s face is flushed with red, and James’s is too. Together they are the strings of a violin, wound too tight. Every note between them is discordant and loud, every breath harsh and uncertain.  
  
And then it’s over.  
  
The music signals a change of partners, and James goes back to Camille, and Kendall returns to Mercedes, finally, and everyone has their laughs in for the night.  
  
“Kendall? What’s wrong?” Mercedes asks, her smirk dropping from her lips. She looks genuinely concerned, and Kendall is an awful person. Like a truly horrible, awful person.  
  
Because nothing is wrong, exactly, except that everything is wrong. That wasn’t a joke to him. That was his heart racing and his body yearning and his entire being focused on one thing; the place where James’s fingers rested against his spine.  
  
Griffin approaches him what feels like hours later, Gustavo at his heels. The party is not even close to wending down, although the moon has already grown small in the sky. Kendall is on his eighth shot of honey vodka and feels like he has fire in his veins.  
  
“Can you sing?” Griffin demands.  
  
What kind of question is that? “Sir?”  
  
Mercedes laughs softly in Kendall’s ear.  
  
“Can you sing?” Griffin repeats in this tone of voice that makes it obvious his patience is wearing thin.  
  
“He can sing,” Gustavo confirms, offhand, more focused on his champagne flute than what’s actually happening. Kendall thinks of snatching the drink away.  
  
“I’m asking him,” Griffin says steadily.  
  
“I can’t.” Kendall protests.  
  
“Sure you can. You’re constantly humming, and like Kelly said, you’re on key, mostly.” Gustavo shrugs. “Just add some words.”  
  
“But why do I have to?” Kendall asks slowly, and he can’t help it if his tone of voice implies that he’d rather not, _please_.  
  
“Family tradition,” Mercedes breaks in. “The prospective groom is supposed to sing a toast.”  
  
Kendall’s drunk enough that he caves, that he convinces Carlos and Logan and James to stand in the middle of the room with him and belt out a ballad for his new fiancée.  
  
Music is an idea, a concept that sits on his shoulders and lives on his chest. It is words, woven into a magic spell, but also notes and melodies that make his ribcage tremble. It feathers along his skin and grows there, wings he does not quite know how to use. But he thinks he would very much like to learn, to let it shiver through him until he is soaring, brilliant, bright. Kendall lets the song build inside of him like a glow, trades it back and forth with Carlos and Logan and James until the four of them are in perfect harmony. They’re in sync, because they always are, belonging solely to each other since the day they fled Minnesota.  
  
When it’s done, there is applause. There is Griffin actually smiling and joking, “Why aren’t they on the radio?”  
  
And there is James beaming, his happiness dazzling. At his side, Logan and Carlos share a covert fist bump.  
  
“They were alright,” Gustavo allows.  
  
“Alright? They were amazing!” Mercedes throws her arms around Kendall’s neck. “Sexy and talented.”  
  
She kisses Kendall right on the lips, and James’s smile drops off of his face.  
  
He leaves, walks straight out of the ballroom with a storm cloud hovering above his head. Kendall waits through Mercedes’s gushing and Griffin’s congratulations and the adoration of a million strangers before he can follow, even though it’s all he wants to do.  
  
All he ever wants to do is follow James. He is bright light, and Kendall is a moth, drawn, irrevocably, no matter how wrong he knows it is.  
  
He finds James in the atrium at the back of Griffin’s house. Kendall’s never been in it before, but he’s passed it by, sneaking with Mercedes across the padded carpet to the kitchen or the dining room or one of the mansion’s million other secret niches.  
  
Kendall recognizes some of the herbs and flowers inside the glass room because Logan is always fooling around with new plants, trying to create something from nothing, a cure for whatever plagues whoever. James runs his fingers over some night blooming something or other, white and fragile against his big hands. Kendall’s feet crunch over the pebbles, the sound echoing against the glass.  
  
James turns, hand at the pommel of his sword, his dumb sword that the stupid councilman allowed him to keep because it’s not dangerous, not like a gun.  
  
It looks dangerous.  
  
James looks dangerous.  
  
He relaxes the second he sees Kendall. He tilts his head to the side and says, a little stiffly, “You should get back to your party.”  
  
“When you’re throwing a temper tantrum?” Kendall crosses his arms. “Like I could.”  
  
James’s forehead furrows, and why is Kendall always making him make that expression? James’s fingers squeeze around the poor flower blossom until one of the petals falls to the floor. “I’m not throwing a temper tantrum.”  
  
“You’re not exactly sunshine and rainbows.”  
  
“You really want me to pretend to be happy?” James is shadows. He is anger. No one else ever sees him like this, open and vulnerable, emotions churning beneath the surface of his smile.  
  
None of the girls he trades in every night.  
  
None of his friends at L’Amour.  
  
Not even Logan or Carlos.  
  
Kendall is the only one who gets to be around James when he’s storm tossed and angry and upset, when he can’t put on his game face with the charming smile and the tilted eyes.  
  
“Why aren’t you happy?”  
  
“Because you’re not,” James replies easily.  
  
“Does that matter?” Kendall asks feebly.  
  
“Don’t ask stupid questions.”  
  
“So I’ll try to be happy. Will that change things?” Kendall reaches out, touches the downturn of James’s lips. There is this tug inside his chest, strings pulled taught. He feels like James has dipped his fingers inside of him, like he is playing Kendall the same way someone else would strum a guitar. He feels big, too big, too much to hold in. He asks, “Will it make you smile again?”  
  
James flinches, and Kendall drops his hand. The air between them is fuzzy and dark, but James’s skin glows beneath the moonlight that filters through the glass roof of the atrium, like he’s absorbing it.  
  
“You’re too young to get married.”  
  
“I know,” Kendall agrees. James’s lips thin, the shadows on his face deepening until he is all cheekbone and brow and the strong line of his nose.  
  
He says, “It’s a bad idea.”  
  
Steadily, Kendall replies, “I know.”  
  
This time, James is the one who reaches out and touches Kendall’s face. He is shaking. His fingertips tremble over Kendall’s skin. “I don’t want you to.”  
  
“I know,” Kendall says, even if he’s not sure of the reason or the rationale. He presses his palm against James’s chest, just to feel if his heartbeat matches the staccato rhythm of his breath. “I wish I could change it, dude. But the world is ending, and this is how-“ He bites his lip, tastes blood. “This is how things have to be. It’s fucking tragic.”  
  
“It’s not.” James shakes his head, capturing Kendall’s face fully between his hands. “Look around you, Kendall. Does this look anything like the end? The world is beautiful.”  
  
James strokes his thumb against Kendall’s cheekbone, and there is no light in which he will ever look anything but radiant. The moonlight and the shadows and the dim glimmer of the world outside make him glow, and there is a sweetness deep inside of Kendall, in the marrow of his bones, turning his tendons to jelly.  
  
James makes him weak, just like that, like he is a warm, shining mess inside. Kendall brushes his mouth against the arch of James’s cheekbone, nuzzling into the hollow, the curve of his nose, the place where his eyelashes fan.  
  
Their lips brush. James’s mouth makes Kendall feel tipsier than the champagne, tingly, like bubbles are fizzing against his lips. He tastes like honey vodka and sadness.  
  
It turns rough, and quick. Kendall pops the button of the stupid starched shirt James wears, his hands brushing over the ring that James never takes off, lacing through the chain, pulling him even closer. James moans into his mouth, hitches their hips together, and for this one, terrifying moment, it’s better than anything Kendall has ever experienced in his life.  
  
Strains of music from the party pierce at Kendall’s ears, but he can’t hear them, can’t process them, because James is a melody all his own, from the percussion drum of his heart beat to the wind instrument of his breath to the little _ahahah_ s of his voice. When they break for air, James mouths over his throat, a wet slide emphasized by his tongue and his teeth when he nips and sucks. He marks Kendall with bruises, growls _mine_ after deliberating over the hollow beneath Kendall’s jaw, and he feels tender and raw and ridiculously turned on. He groans, and it sounds like the ringing baritone of an organ pipe, jarred and loud.  
  
The air is thick with the scent of night blooming jasmine and James.  
  
The heavy weight of James’s dick brings him back to his senses. Kendall can feel him hot and hard against his thigh, and he wants…he wants…  
  
Shit.  
  
He might as well wrap his lips around the barrel of his own gun. What are they doing? This can’t happen. Like this they can only exist in darkness, in hidden moments that go by too quickly.  
  
“Stop it.” Kendall pushes James away.  
  
He doesn’t want to. It’s one of the most difficult things he’s ever done, but this can’t happen. He doesn’t even know what this _is_.  
  
James reaches for him, tries to rope him back in, and Kendall stutters out, “Didn’t I say? Living like this is already a tragedy. You don’t need to make it worse.”  
  
James stills. “What do you mean?”  
  
“You can’t repopulate anything with me. And I’m engaged. And. We-“ Kendall swallows, hard. His mind is racing faster than it ever has, and Kendall is having a hard time keeping up. “We need to stay away from each other.”  
  
James pulls back his hand, hurt flashing across his face as quickly as a heat storm, here and gone in an instant. For a second, his hand hovers in the air near his own shoulder, like he’s not sure what its purpose is anymore.  
  
Then it goes to rest against the hilt of his sword.  
  
Kendall hopes he doesn’t plan on using it, really using it, for once in his life. But all James does is nod and say, “Okay,” voice thick with something Kendall can’t identify.  
  
Mostly because he doesn’t want to.


	5. Can You Heal What Went Wrong?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Church bells toll, thunder in the distance. Midnight. On the distant airwaves of their own radio, situated in the living room, a choir begins to sing, one long dulcet note turning into a chorus, filling the air. And Kendall can’t hear anything, too hypnotized by the rise and fall of James’s breath, the crinkle of his clothes, and the nervous catch in his throat.

It’s not that Kendall is avoiding going home. It’s just that he’s keeping some distance from the apartment. Because distance is a good thing. Distance means clarity and being away from the narrow eyed hurt that floods James’s gaze whenever Kendall comes near.  
  
Kendall can’t take that look, that mixture of disappointment and anger that mostly makes him feel distressed and desperate to fix it.  
  
Only distance also means that Kendall has to find a way to occupy the time that’s not filled by his work at the studio or wedding plans, and there’s only so much of the day he can spend drowning his sorrows at L’Amour. It’s weird how much time he wasted away with James, just sitting on the roof of their crashpad, soaking in the sun or joking about girls or bickering over shit that no one else would even give a damn about. Kendall tried skulking around with Mercedes and her lemmings for a few days, but that was disastrous. He prefers that Mercedes never gets a chance to threaten him with something sharp and pointy ever again, because he actually has no doubt that she really would introduce his esophagus to his nuts.  
  
So now he’s on his fallback plan, which is harassing the fuck out of his other best friends.  
  
The apothecary creeps Kendall out. It smells like plants and soil rot and mold. There’s not a whole lot of light in the front room, and the old prior keeps a shelf lined with skulls; from human to coyote to gulls to cougars. Kendall doesn’t know if they are trophies or if it is just a shrine to death. Neither would surprise him.  
  
Logan is in a corner, bent over a row of glass jars that he is filling with something that looks a lot like parsley. He moves with the kind of precision that demonstrates he knows exactly what he’s doing, but it’s not shocking. The kid’s read every medical text book he could get his greedy hands on. If he’s not an expert by now, he’s pretty damn close.  
  
Shadows play over his face, and for a long minute all Kendall can think of is Nevada and the puffy swell of Logan’s cheekbones where bruises blossomed over his skin, black-blue beneath a bright red stain of blood. He rubs the heel of his palms against his eyes, trying to chase away the memory, but it’s always there. Life on the road was a kind of freedom, but there were also times that it was hellish.  
  
Kendall doesn’t like to think about that. “Knock, knock.”  
  
Logan glances up, his face unmarred by anything except surprise. “Kendall, hey.”  
  
“Hi.”  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
“Uh. Visiting?”  
  
Logan’s eyes crinkle with fondness. He inclines his head and prompts, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”  
  
“I can’t just visit my best friend in the whole world?”  
  
Logan snorts. “Not on a normal day, no.”  
  
“What are you concocting, there?” Kendall pokes one of the glass jars, watching it teeter precariously in its stand. Logan bats his hand away.  
  
“Not something you should be touching.”  
  
“Aw, come on. No one’s gonna see. Where’s the old man, anyway?”  
  
Automatically, Logan replies, “He hates when you call him that.”  
  
“Really? I thought he was too stoned to care.” Kendall doesn’t dislike Doc Hollywood, exactly. He’s just a wee bit past the border of nutty, and being around him makes Kendall feel like he might lose it too.  
  
Also, one time he tried to treat one of Kendall’s paper cuts with a butcher knife, so can anyone even blame him for being uneasy around the dude? He’s not sure how Logan manages to put up with him. Obviously Logan’s got a psyche of iron after dealing with Kendall, James, and Carlos for so many years.  
  
Logan gives him the stink eye, but then he says, “It’s good you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t like the sound of that. Talks involve feelings and emotions and solemnity, and he’s not in the mood for any of it. He totally should have visited Carlos instead.  
  
Straight to the point, Logan says, “You should stop fighting with James.”  
  
“I’m not… _fighting_ …with James…” Kendall replies lamely. Logan is not even close to fooled. One of the many downsides to being besties with someone since the tender age of eight.  
  
“He’s worried about you. So’s Carlos. So am I,” Logan adds a bit ruefully. “This wedding thing is…”  
  
“I thought you thought it was a good idea.”  
  
“In theory it is. If you marry Mercedes, we’re set for life. No one will come after us for anything. But. I’m not sure that matters if you’re miserable.”  
  
“Why is everyone so convinced I’m miserable?” Kendall complains, propping his elbows up on the big wooden table and making the entire thing shake, glass clinking, tinkling throughout the store. “Do I look that upset?”  
  
“Kendall. We’ve known you forever. We all remember that sappy romantic crap you used to go on about when you were a kid.”  
  
“I never-“  
  
“You used to think you were going to marry the Princess Bride. This…I mean, Mercedes is great. And you obviously like her a lot. But.” Logan chews on his lip. “Can you really, honestly tell me that you’re going to be happy being tied down to her for the rest of your life?”  
  
Kendall doesn’t know what to say. The situation’s not ideal. Marriage will change a lot in his life. He won’t be able to spend as much time with the guys, for one. No more kicking around at L’Amour or whiling away lazy nights at the beach or on the rooftop of their apartment. No more listening to Logan or Carlos or James’s breath-sounds right before bed. It will take away that far off, distant dream he’s been harboring of making something more of himself, of becoming integral to Griffin and then worming his way out from under the man’s thumb. Kendall knew from the second he landed his job at the studios that this was it, that this was his life. But the impending wedding closes all his avenues, takes away any slim chance he ever had of finding something better. Like he mused the day that he and Mercedes were caught, he still wants _more_. Just, Kendall isn’t sure what exactly more is, or what it can be.  
  
Power?  
  
A safehaven?  
  
James?  
  
The thought is white hot, unbidden. It makes him bite down hard on his tongue, blood flooding the back of his throat. No, not James. That’s not even in the realm of possibilities.  
  
Basically, he knows that ‘til-death-do-we-part isn’t what he wants from life, but the problem in saying that out loud is that he isn’t sure what it is he _does_ want. Carefully, Kendall replies, “So what? You want me to hold out for true love?”  
  
Logan winces. He tries to cover it by busying himself with the weird plant he’s slicing and dicing. The flickering candlelight plays over his face, making him look chiseled, like a storybook prince. Very, very slowly, he responds, “Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t want you to be unhappy. Even if it means us being safe, I-“ He swallows thickly. “I know you guys don’t always like rules and I know I’ve been pretty dickish about following them. I just want us all to be _okay_. You know that, right?”  
  
“Hey, hey.”  
  
Kendall’s got a hand on Logan’s shoulder, invading his personal space. He doesn’t like the melancholy tone in Logan’s voice, doesn’t like the pinch of his lips or the rigid set of his back. Logan makes a choked sound, and immediately Kendall engulfs him in a big, rib-crushing bear hug.  
  
“Duh,” he breathes into Logan’s hair, and he’s thinking of Nevada and blood, blood like the red clay cliffs drying, crusting off onto an unfinished wood floor. “I know. And Carlos knows. And James knows. You keep us out of trouble, Loginator. You keep us safe,” he promises, an oath, because it’s what Logan needs.  
  
In Nevada, they spent a couple of days crashed out in a roadhouse off the main highway. It was nothing but desert and brush for miles, and they had a stash of guns and whiskey and a huge supply of bar peanuts. It wasn’t a bad place to sleep off some of the exhaustion and terror that had set into their bones.  
  
Logan wandered off in the middle of the day, after a four-way fight that had sort of been inevitably building after months and months pressed up against one another, caged in and terrified that this was all they’d ever have; fear and each other. He wanted to walk his anger off, Kendall guessed, and if the world was still a safe place, that would have been a good idea.  
  
They didn’t find him until two days later, curled around the base of a cactus, lips cracked with dehydration and dried blood. He had a broken arm, bruised ribs, and a slew of new cuts and scars. Not all of which Kendall and James and Carlos could see.  
  
They carried him back to the roadhouse that night and wrapped him in blankets and did what they could. None of them knew squat about medicine, but the bar had an old first aid kit, and Carlos had enough experience breaking his own bones as a kid that they muddled through. When they were finally able to get Logan conscious, they couldn’t goad him into saying much more than that he’d run into some guys who hadn’t liked the look of his face. After that, he clamped up the second anyone brought it up. And he got real, real particular about how badly they all needed to be _safe_.  
  
The idea of what might have actually happened makes Kendall’s blood boil. In a way his imagination is probably worse than the reality, but no matter how much he pries, Logan won’t ever ‘fess up to the details. Still, at least Kendall understands why Logan just wants everyone to follow the rules and keep their heads down:  
  
Don’t wander off track and you’ll always, always be okay.  
  
It doesn’t justify all the bullshit he pulls, sometimes, especially when it comes to Camille, but Kendall _gets it_. He hugs Logan tighter to his chest until some of the tension has left his muscles.  
  
Logan says into the cloth of Kendall’s button down, “If you decide you don’t want to marry her, I’ll help you get out of it.”  
  
“How?” Kendall asks his hairline.  
  
Logan pulls back and gestures around the shop. “Doc Hollywood’s got a lot of strange shit. You’d be surprised what some of these mixtures can do. We can get out of the city, go somewhere else. Mantua, maybe? I’ve heard they’re building walls. We could all go; the guys, Camille, fuck, bring Mercedes if you want and-“  
  
“Logan. We’re not leaving. Mercedes is great,” Kendall says, and she really is. “I’m fine.”  
  
Mostly. The only specific person upsetting him right this minute is a boy with tiger eyes, waiting in the wings, and Kendall’s not quite ready to confront that yet.  
  
“But-“  
  
“Let me protect you this time,” Kendall says soothingly. “You just get really smart and irreplaceable, and one day the four of us will own this town.”  
  
Maybe there’s still a way to have more, Kendall hopes. Maybe marrying Mercedes will be a good thing. He’ll be more powerful. Griffin will be an ally. And between that and Logan’s rising star at the apothecary, life won’t turn out _exactly_ as Kendall imagined, but it won’t suck. That’s something, right?   
  
Kendall hangs around the apothecary for an hour and a half, pestering Logan about what this herb does and what that pill’s for and will these two things explode if you mix them together? Logan finally grabs his hands, stilling the hyperactive energy that trembles through them. He says, “I don’t want to kick you out or anything, but. Work. I have it.”  
  
Which is how Kendall ends up taking advantage of his future fiancée. Again.  
  
As he walks to Mercedes’s, a blood orange sunrise reflects against the water, giving the ocean a crimson glow that is very, very biblical. Kendall isn’t big on religion or god, but he knows what a plague is. He knows what it feels like to be cursed.  
  
A piece of bright yellow paper crunches under his foot. Another execution, scheduled this Wednesday. _Spectacular_. Kendall can barely contain his excitement. He scowls at the asphalt, and then at the blazing sky. Almost despite himself, his feet turn in the opposite direction.  
  
He doesn’t venture away from the ten block radius that encompasses his apartment, the main drag, the studios, the beach, L’Amour, and Mercedes’s very often. The city Verona used to be encompassed miles, and still does. There are streets that are empty and dark from disuse. There are places where no one goes unless they want to get their throat slit. And then there is the huge chain link and red brick monstrosity that keeps the refugees from walking in unattended.  
  
Kendall can smell the fences before he reaches them, metal breaks in Verona’s high walls that allow him to see out into the darkness, where the refugees gather. Foulness emanates from the trench that acts as a place to piss, less than half a mile off, but lone refugees won’t even wander that far for fear of losing their place in line. The whole stretch of land beyond the fences reeks like an outhouse, and more.  
  
The stench of death is there, thick and cloying.  
  
Kendall steps off the curb and into the street. He can see them, now, refugees in single file, waiting until their turn is called. It’s cruel. People travel for thousands of miles to reach the city, braving all kinds of danger, and then they are told to _sit and wait their turn_ , to survive hunger and thirst and cold nights and the outbreaks of disease all on the hope that they might gain admission into the city. A few people leave, trekking out into the wasteland of the surrounding towns in search of food.  
  
Sometimes they come back.  
  
Sometimes they don’t.  
  
Kendall nearly died a whole handful of times out there, looking for something for them all to eat while James and Carlos and Logan held his place in line. After all they’d gone through to reach Verona, Kendall would not let them passively starve. He walks along the length of the fences now, reminiscing, trying to ignore the cold faces of Hawk’s militiamen, watching him suspiciously.  
  
At a break in the long, snaking line on the other side is a fire, and there are drums. A girl is dancing, wending her body left, right, forward, in time with the drums. The firelight makes her look otherworldly.  
  
Kendall remembers this. In the months they spent sitting outside the fence he was able to count the jut of his ribs beneath his skin. He could hear the sound Carlos’s stomach made when it was beyond empty. And in the midst of that, there was no entertainment at all except for what they made for themselves. It doesn’t seem like such a big thing, _boredom_ , when you’re so hungry you can’t see straight. But back then, the distraction was what kept them sane. James would dance, sometimes, shifting from one move to the next, as capricious and captivating as wildfire. It was impossible to look away.  
  
It still is, when he’s swaying back and forth in L’Amour, holding some girl in his arms. James doesn’t know how to be anything but enchanting.  
  
Kendall scrubs a hand over his eyes, trying to drown out the image of the engagement party, the memory of James’s fingertips against his skin. He’s not sure why he thought coming here would invite any kind of clarity. All it does is make him miss James and Carlos and Logan. He wants to run back home and press his fingers to their ribcages and make sure they’ve been fed, that they’re as healthy and alive as he remembers from this morning, this afternoon. Emaciation wasn’t a good look for any of them.  
  
The drumbeats get louder. Hawk’s men bang the butt of their rifles against the fence. They yell at the refugees to _simmer down_. They laugh when they crush a child’s fingers.  
  
Kendall hates them.  
  
Camille is the only exception to that rule. The night he met her, James was dancing while three corpses rotted in a heap less than twenty feet away. They were kids, younger than Kendall and the guys. They tried to scale the fence.  
  
Hawk’s enforcers hadn’t appreciated their efforts.  
  
The stench was disgusting, and the smoke of the fire, fueled by old newspapers and whatever wood they could scavenge from nearby homes burned something awful, black billowing clouds thick in Kendall’s nose. The silhouette of James’s body wove in and out of the haze, sinuous, hypnotic. Carlos sashayed next to him, drawing his hands over his head in beckoning motions, like he was trying to draw water from the cracked earth. Kendall alternated between trading comments with Logan, who was trying to inventory the few constellations they could make out in the sky and talking casually with one of their neighbors in line; a man so sick with disease that small gnat like creatures nested in his wounds. They turned to fat white maggots his loving wife tried and failed to pick out. Kendall recalls eyeing one of the squirming creatures, disgusted by his entire existence. The past year of his life had been lousy with the kind of poverty stricken conditions he’d only ever seen on the news. He’d thought maybe they would die out there, waiting for admittance beyond the walls of a city he’d never seen.  
  
Then he spotted Camille through a break in the fences, watching James dance. She beckoned Kendall over and struck up a conversation.  
  
The rest is history.  
  
Kendall stares at the smoke of the fire, at the girl with her belly-dancer charm. The catcalls of the enforcers are turning hard, dangerous. It reminds him of the night those kids died.  
  
He all but runs to Mercedes’s house.

\---

  
He is safe.  
  
The wind rustles sheer curtains, fluttering white like smoke against the night sky. The chimes Mercedes keeps outside her window tinkle, metal hitting metal, creating a pretty little melody.  And of course, the radio crackles with white noise, static that settles across Kendall’s skin before a song starts up. Here, in this safe haven of a place, Kendall does not have to think about death.  
  
Mercedes runs her fingers across Kendall’s chest, her smile wicked, her mouth soft. Kendall pulls her against him and kisses her deep, bruising. He wants more. He needs more to erase all the terrible things that are haunting him, the ghosts at his heels.  
  
Only Mercedes is soft in all the places that James was hard, and Kendall feels guilty for even thinking it. He pulls her lower lip between his teeth, ruts up into her heat, and tries not to think of the way James’s hips pressed against his, hothardwilling- _shit_.  
  
Kendall rears back, putting as much distance as he can between himself and Mercedes until the white silk sheets stretch like miles between them.  
  
“Kendall?” Mercedes asks, her mouth gaping open, like she’s still half locked inside that kiss.  
  
“Shit,” he breathes. “Sorry.”  
  
Mercedes gets a hold of herself, carding her fingers through her hair. For a second she’s quiet. Then she says, “Look, it’s not that big a deal. It happens to a lot of guys. Not usually guys that I sleep with, but hey-“  
  
“That’s not it,” Kendall groans into her pillow, mortified.  
  
The song on the radio changes, rushing in to fill the great yawning sound of _awkward_ filling the room. Mercedes’s fingertips touch his shoulder blade, cool and small. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you okay? I know this wedding thing is…abrupt.” She wrinkles her nose; he can actually hear it. “Daddy’s used to getting what he wants.”  
  
A smile ghosts over Kendall’s lips, and he rolls over to grab a kiss. Against her lips he mumbles, “Like father, like daughter.”  
  
“Hey,” Mercedes smacks him in the arm. She hits hard for a girl, but Kendall’s not even close to surprised by it. Even though Mercedes is one of the only people in Verona he’s ever met who doesn’t carry a gun, he’s got no doubt that she knows how to handle one.  
  
He’s about to make a snarky comment about how gosh darned cute it is that his fiancée punches harder than his best friends when the door swings wide open. There is a guy standing in the doorframe.  
  
“Christ, can’t you knock?” Mercedes demands, pulling the sheet around the both of them. The moonlight is bright enough that Kendall can see the haughty line of the guy’s cheekbones, the impudent jut of his lips. He recognizes the dude, vaguely. The first time he met him, he was sitting behind a solid wood desk, filing his nails and pretending Kendall didn’t exist while Kendall waited to complete his interview with Griffin. The second time was at the engagement party.  
  
Around Griffin, the guy was quiet, a shadow who gave Kendall slightly judgey eyes, but didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Now he is loud, arrogant, and completely obnoxious. “You really chose him? _Consensually_? His face is bizarre.”  
  
Kendall’s face is not bizarre. He takes serious offense to that comment.  
  
Mercedes is still scrabbling to cover them both up, and the dude drawls airily, “Please, it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”  
  
“Excuse you?” Kendall demands, wrapping a protective arm around Mercedes’s shoulder.  
  
She shrugs it off, not much for damseling, but she does flash Kendall a quick grin and says, “I’ve got this, baby. Excuse you?”  
  
The guy smirks.  
  
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “What do you want, Jett?”  
  
“Will you believe me if I say the pleasure of your company?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Smart girl.” Jett folds his arms across his chest. “Your father wants to talk to you about the third quarter report. Something about forecasting and I don’t know, it was dreadfully boring.”  
  
“Great. Get out now.”  
  
“Are you coming?”  
  
There is an edge to Mercedes’s voice that Kendall’s never heard before when she snaps, “In a minute.”  
  
After Jett leaves, she makes no move to get up. She curls into Kendall’s body, relaxing her hold on the sheet.  
  
“Aren’t you going to go?”  
  
“It can wait.”  
  
“But you’ve got big, important things to do.”  
  
Kendall kisses the tip of her nose. He doesn’t mean to sound condescending; he honestly thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world that Mercedes loves what she does. All the same, she stiffens. “Don’t mock it. My job’s about hope.”  
  
He can’t help retorting, “How?”  
  
Mercedes pauses, listening to the music crackling from her tiny radio. After a beat she says, “When you’re listening to a song and you feel like you can’t go on and you reach that crescendo- it hovers in the air, sends chills down your spine, makes your chest feel too full, and suddenly you _can_ keep going…that’s what it’s about.”  
  
Kendall thinks of the string quartet at the engagement party, of the place the song pitched high and made his heart feel close to exploding. He has to change the subject.  
  
He has to.  
  
“Who was that?”  
  
“Dad’s PA. Jett Stetson. He’s an ass.”  
  
Kendall figures assery is a requirement to be personal assistant to Arthur Griffin. “I noticed. Another ex?”  
  
Mercedes scowls, digging her nails into Kendall’s hip. “Don’t give me that look. I don’t judge your love life.”  
  
“You’ve never asked about it.”  
  
“That’s because I don’t want to know. The past doesn’t matter. It’s just us now.” She burrows into his ribcage, nosing along the line of his pectoral muscle. She sucks a kiss into his flesh, trying to change the subject.  
  
Kendall takes a hint. He turns it into a joke. “Yeah, but. The past shows you have horrible taste in guys.”  
  
He feels her lips curve against his skin. “I know. I picked you, didn’t I?”  
  
Kendall makes an indignant noise. The song on the radio changes again. Mercedes lips over the shape of his aureole, tongue flicking out wet against his nipple. Then she says, “In all seriousness? Jett dated me to get to my dad. Just like Dak. And just like all the guys before him.”  
  
He softens, brushing a tendril of blonde from her face. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Whatever, it wasn’t like I was in love with them.” There’s something hot and tight that crosses her face, almost like pain. Mercedes pecks him on the lips, soft and then hard, turning it deep to hide whatever it was in her eyes. She murmurs, “And they were great lays.”  
  
Kendall’s eyes go wide and mock-wounded. It’s weird how he’s not jealous, not really, of Mercedes’s past. He thinks he should be. He thinks that a person can’t help jealousy when they’re in love.  
  
And that’s the problem. Mercedes is beautiful. Mercedes is a whirlwind. They have fun together. And Kendall loves that. Kendall loves her. The thing he’s only just starting to get is that he’s not _in love_ with her. There are things that are missing, like implicit trust. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. Not about something real.  
  
Abruptly, he asks, “How do you feel about the executions?”  
  
“How do I feel…” Mercedes’s face darkens. “Why the sudden interest in politics?”  
  
“No reason.” Kendall tries to play it cool. “There was a notice I saw on the way here, and I just realized. I don’t know very much about…what you think.”  
  
Mercedes’s gaze goes distant. Like she’s reciting something that Kendall can’t see, she says, “It’s not my place to disagree with the Reproduction Initiative or their bylaws.”  
  
“I don’t follow. Does that mean you do disagree, or you don’t?”  
  
“I have no opinion.” Mercedes props her tan arms against the pillows.  
  
“But…If anyone should have an opinion, it’s Arthur Griffin’s daughter.”  
  
“Individual thought breeds discord.” Mercedes touches his face, brushes her lips against his. “Anarchy, my dear.”  
  
“And that means you…what, don’t think?”  
  
“That means I’m not stupid enough to talk about it in the house. Not ever.” Mercedes glances at her window, at the door. “You’re marrying into a powerful family, Knight. You should learn the golden rule.”  
  
“And that is?”  
  
“You never know who’s listening.” Mercedes hops up out of bed and shrugs on a robe. She hesitates. “Are you staying the night? Again?”  
  
Kendall considers. As much as he wants to, “I should probably go home.”  
  
“It’s not any of my business, but if you’re fighting with your friends…don’t. They seem like really good guys.” Mercedes leans in, giving him one last chaste kiss, and all Kendall can think of is how she’s right.  
  
It’s not any of her business.

\---

  
Kendall stares up at the gold glow of the apartment’s windows and wonders if James has a girl up there.  
  
Logan’s still at the apothecary; Kendall saw the lights switched on when he walked past, and it’s much, much too early for Carlos to be back from work. But the apartment is all lit up. The idea makes Kendall feel vaguely annoyed, his feelings grown jungle-wild inside his chest, pulling at his ribcage, trying to push through his spine. He doesn’t want to walk in on James and his latest naked conquest of the week, half-drunk on shine and more than a little wasted on each other. He actually did just that two days ago, found James fucking slow in and out of a girl in the sanctuary of their bedroom, the door wide open. It took all of Kendall’s self-control not to pull his gun on the both of them, something inside of him slipping, cracking, making him feel like he was losing his mind.  
  
It’s somehow worse, knowing James really is trying to hurt him on purpose, throwing whatever happened at Griffin’s back in his face, on top of the wedding. Like it’s Kendall’s fault that they can’t be…well. He’s not actually entirely sure what it is that James wants them to be, not sure why his lips turned traitor in the first place. He doesn’t want James like that, except for how maybe he does.  
  
His heart thuds, a painful spike in his chest, and he wonders if this is what it’s like, growing up. Everything Kendall thought he knew is turning on its head, gone topsy-turvy, making him doubt, making him want things he never knew he would. Shit was easier when they were kids, when James was just the little boy he used to wrestle with, side by side in the sandbox, playing swords with long branches or battling against each other with a collection of My Little Ponies, Power Rangers, and assorted super heroes, from the Ninja Turtles to Spider-Man. Ten years ago, James was just Kendall’s silly best friend who wanted to grow up to be a popstar.  
  
Now the world has changed around them, but Kendall hasn’t, and the amount that he loves James hasn’t either, not even a little bit.  
  
He gathers his courage and tries the doorknob. It is locked.  
  
Okay, this is an actual problem. Not once in all the time Kendall and the guys have been squatting at the apartment have they ever locked the door. It would be super counterintuitive, seeing as they lack a key and all. Kendall’s first thought is that James forgot. He’s not sure how that could possibly happen, but he gives James the benefit of the doubt. Kendall throws pebbles from the desolate garden adjacent to the place at the windows, his aim off for a few tries. The moon is still bright, but not so bright that he’s one hundred percent certain he’s hitting the glass.  
  
At least not until James storms out onto the balcony, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the eye. He growls, “What?”  
  
“The door’s locked,” Kendall calls, and he’s starting to think the chances of that being accidental are close to none.  
  
“I know!” James yells back, hands on the rusty, wrought iron railing of their balcony. Strains of music drift down, Griffin's pirated radio station still up and kicking. Mood music, maybe? Kendall winces. His mouth still tastes metallic. “Go away.”  
  
Kendall groans. This is not happening. “But I live here.”  
  
“You could’ve fooled me with how often you’ve been home.” James’s eyes gleam, even from two stories high. He looks…wounded.  
  
“Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt you and your skanks,” Kendall bites back, trying to quell his own guilt. So maybe his distance argument is bullshit. Maybe avoiding James has just been _easier_.  
  
“At least they like being around me.” James retorts in his stubborn, prissy voice, crossing his arms.  
  
“Is one up there now?” Kendall asks, his voice breaking. He refuses to be cowed by James’s answer, no matter what it is.  
  
There is a pause, and then a snotty call of, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”  
  
Kendall snaps. “I’d like you to let me _in_.”  
  
“That’s not happening,” James rages, anger barely contained. Kendall glares up at him, and he glares right back. Then he says, “You know what; I wouldn’t want you to be all unclean for work tomorrow. Here.”  
  
Something flutters down from the balcony, and it’s only after it lands on Kendall’s head that he realizes it’s one of his plaid shirts.  
  
The ones that James really loves to mock.  
  
“James. I’m not kidding. Let me inside. I want to go to sleep.” A pair of jeans lands on Kendall’s head, and okay, this is getting ridiculous. When he tries to get a good look at the denim he sees that they’re not even his, they’re Logan’s. “Dude!”  
  
“Go. _Away_.”  
  
James is hurt, lashing out like a feral animal to protect himself. Kendall gets that, he really, really does. But he’s bone tired and not even close to equipped to deal with one of his best friend’s bitch fits. And maybe that’s a problem that’s been happening a lot lately, this exhaustion that settles deep inside his marrow and doesn’t flee, no matter how much sleep Kendall manages to slog through. Maybe if he was a better friend, he would manage James’s fits the way he used to before the world broke to pieces.  
  
Instead he yells, “James!”  
  
“You know what? I’m not even talking to you.” James’s lips thin, his grip on the railing white knuckled. He adds, “We’re _staying away from each other_ , remember?”  
  
“Those are words.” Kendall points out. “Coming from your mouth. And look, I didn’t mean to- we’re still buds, alright? I just-“ Kendall finds himself fascinated by the press of James’s teeth into his lower lip, like he’s been gnawing on it. It’s ridiculous that he can see that when he couldn’t tell if his stupid pebbles were making it high enough before. “Shit. I just needed some space.”  
  
“Space?” James sounds outraged. “Good. I’m giving you all the fucking space you want. I’m out of here.”  
  
He turns to go back into the apartment.  
  
“James, geez, at least let me in first!”  
  
“No can do, buddy. I’m giving you _space_ ,” James replies sardonically. He is actually walking off the balcony, actually going to leave Kendall out here all night. At the last second, James scoops up his stupid palm tree to take it inside with him, like Kendall might scale the balcony and steal it or something.  
  
That’s totally the last straw. “James!”  
  
“Go away,” James yells again, clutching his potted palm to his chest.  
  
“Unlock the door, James,” Kendall instructs impatiently. Throwing a rock at James’s head would resolve this more quickly.  
  
Or at least make him feel better.  
  
Kendall goes with the less insane plan of actually trying to scale the balcony. He tries his hand at shimmying up the old plastic gutter that runs from the decrepit garden straight up to their floor. It trembles and quakes beneath his weight, the plastic rickety with age. He can hear it straining against the nuts and bolts that keep it strapped to the brick, can hear the pop when one after another gives.  
  
He is near the top now, barely a foot away from the ancient railing. The gutter gives out.  
  
Kendall does not crash to the ground.  
  
“I’ve got you,” James says, steady, his hand gripping hard at Kendall’s wrist, and Kendall _knows_. It’s the one thing he’s always known; James would never, ever let him fall.  
  
But whether or not James has his back has never been the issue here.  
  
He lets James haul him up and over the railing, into the golden glow of light from their crashpad. Their _empty_ crashpad. Kendall can’t see any sign of that fictional girl he was so very jealous of. His shoulders sag with relief.  
  
James is still holding onto his wrist. He strokes his thumb along the underside of Kendall’s hand. It’s not fair how good it feels. Kendall chokes out, “Behave yourself.”  
  
James does not know how to. He stares at Kendall, and Kendall stares back, caught by the luminescence of the moon in James’s eyes. He feels like fighting. He feels like fleeing. There’s no option that won’t hurt James, so he just stands there, dumbly, until James pulls Kendall against his hard body, enfolding him tight in his arms. Into the crown of Kendall’s head, the words muffled by his hair, James scoffs, “Space, really?”  
  
Sometimes James is a discordant note, ringing through the air and grating on Kendall’s ears. Sometimes he is perfect harmony. Right now he is a mixture of both.  
  
“Don’t hate me,” Kendall replies into the hollow of James’s throat, the pulse point beneath his jaw. He wraps his arms around James’s back, trying to pull him even closer. “I don’t want you to hate me.”  
  
He half hopes his words are lost in the wind, absorbed by James’s skin, unable to actually be heard.  
  
He isn’t so lucky.  
  
“I could never,” James replies, one hand coming up to cup the back of Kendall’s neck, the other a secure band keeping him in place. “It doesn’t matter how stupid you are.”  
  
Kendall bristles, and it’s good, because he is in way too deep. He’s intoxicated off the scent of James so close after so long, a little aroused by the cool outline of James’s sword belt buckle pressed against the soft flesh of his belly. “Stupid? Excuse me for trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”  
  
James actually laughs right into Kendall’s ear, hot breath that warms his skin. “You honestly think this is a mistake?”  
  
“This?” Kendall pushes away, tries to get some space between him and James, but James won’t let go. Kendall is tangled up in his best friend’s arms, mumbling, “There is no this. There was just…that night…and you were drunk. And I was drunk. And we didn’t know what we were doing.”  
  
It sounds like a lie, tastes false on his tongue, and James is quick to shoot it down. “I knew what I was doing. And so did you, don’t even try to pin this all on the alcohol. You kissed me back.”  
  
“I know.” He can’t lie. Not to James. Not to himself. James clutches Kendall tighter, and Kendall lets himself relax. Fighting it isn’t working. He owes it to James to at least try to figure this out. “We just, we don’t do it again. We go back to normal.”  
  
Softly, James tells the curve of Kendall’s ear, “Normal isn’t what I want.”  
  
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. He inhales, deep, and thinks of the fences. Of Nevada. Of the airy space that is Mercedes’s room and how he so beyond doesn’t belong there. Despite himself, Kendall lets his mouth brush soft against James’s neck for the briefest of moments.  
  
It’s like his lips have missed the taste of him.  
  
James arches into it, pleads, “Just kiss me again. I want you to kiss me.”  
  
Kendall reels back in earnest, frees himself from James’s arms and stumbles back into the balcony railing. “I can’t.”  
  
“Yes you can.” James takes a step forward, and then another. He is back in Kendall’s face, defiant, beautiful. No one has ever been as beautiful as James. “Tell me why we can’t do this.”  
  
“You know why.”  
  
Church bells toll, thunder in the distance. Midnight. On the distant airwaves of their own radio, situated in the living room, a choir begins to sing, one long dulcet note turning into a chorus, filling the air. And Kendall can’t hear anything, too hypnotized by the rise and fall of James’s breath, the crinkle of his clothes, and the nervous catch in his throat.  
  
He has no fucking idea what to do.


	6. Killing Me Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” Kendall admits, but his voice is surly. “And you’re making fun of me.”
> 
> “I’m not.”
> 
> “James.”
> 
> “I’m not,” James insists. His hands move to fist in the collar of Kendall’s Hawaiian shirt, crumpling exotic flowers, a sacred heart bleeding across his knuckles. He yanks forward, knocks their foreheads together and warns, “Look, I know this ends in a hail of bullets. I know we should stop.”

On a night as dark and still as this one, Kendall remembers the world ending.  
  
Or, no, that’s not accurate. Kendall remembers being seven years old, huddled beneath nylon fabric with a flashlight and James, Logan, and Carlos, telling a ghost story that was mostly plagiarized from the Amityville movies, which were just about the scariest thing he knew at the time. He remembers Logan rolling his eyes, ever-skeptical about anything make-believe, Carlos’s gape-mouthed awe and fear, thin arms wrapped around his knees. And he remembers James.  
  
James, who didn’t care much about ghosts either way, real or not, because he was fully confident that he could take on anything with his best friends by his side. James provided all the spooky sound effects for Kendall’s tale, for as much as they bickered like brothers, he was always happy to be Kendall’s partner in crime. Together they terrified Carlos and Logan, with all his practical skepticism, right into the fetal position, and that night Kendall fell asleep with James’s smile mirroring his own, the red of their shared high five still stinging his hand.  
  
When he woke up, curled in his sleeping bag, the world was a different place.  
  
“Kiss me,” James repeats, smile identical to the mischievous thing it was at seven, at nine, at eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. It is a dare and it is a death sentence.  
  
It is all he wants.  
  
They crash into each other, and it is noisy and messy and not at all nice. James’s mouth is hot, dry, brutal, and it’s never been like this before. Kendall’s never kissed anyone like he might not get another chance to do so. James cages Kendall’s face with his hands, long fingers lying flat against the curve of Kendall’s cheekbones, tips brushing the delicate cartilage of his ears. He pants into Kendall’s mouth, draws the oxygen from his lungs, and fuck, fuck, _fuck_.  
  
It’s different then Mercedes, not only because of the telltale bristle of scruff against Kendall’s chin, but the angles and the strength in James’s arms, the way Kendall’s definitely not even a little bit in control. He feels like he’s standing at the end of the world all over again.  
  
Back then, he couldn’t do a thing. Governments tear apart like tissue paper, and it’s shocking how little it takes to instigate a riot. People claimed to abhor violence, but really, to four little boys in Minnesota, it felt like everyone was just waiting to reclaim the caveman days. Once the end came, it took a handful of weeks for civilization to deteriorate completely, the carefully constructed rules of society falling by the wayside at the mere prospect of the apocalypse.  
  
If people didn’t let panic control them, fear drive them, maybe it would have been different. Maybe America, North, South, and Central, could have rebounded. But only very smart men and women understand that people are inherently selfish, and only the most powerful had the means to do anything about it. Being people, and rather inherently selfish themselves, those in power chose to create bastions of safety.  
  
Verona.  
  
Marseilles.  
  
Antium.  
  
Bohemia.  
  
Navarre.  
  
And so many more, all these places and strange new names, where the privileged could while away the rest of their days. They could’ve attempted to get the country back on track, but no. Those left on the outside fell victim to all the things that take so many fledgling civilizations before they start; hunger, disease, and the monsters that live inside human beings. Teeth and claws only stay hidden as long as there’s a significant authority to say that they must. The medieval ages fell upon the twenty first century like they never even left.  
  
That’s why the Reproduction Initiative with its public executions and anti-sodomy laws clicked into place so easily. All these former futurists wanted a modicum of safety and control back in their lives, and they were willing to give up free choice to get it. Even Kendall, even now; losing control is fucking terrifying.  
  
“Hey, I know that face. That’s your thinking face,” James nips at his lower lip. “You’re not allowed to wear that face when you’re this close to me.” He cups Kendall’s chin and draws him into a gentler kiss. Soft, plush, slick-wet with saliva. He tastes just like home, and yeah, okay, Kendall knows all the reasons he needs to stop this before it goes any further. But James captures starlight in his eyes. It swims inside of him, sets him alight, and Kendall right along with him.  
  
“If Logan comes back-“  
  
“He won’t,” James promises, like he can actually know that. “He _won’t_.”  
  
“Carlos could-“  
  
“Kendall.” In James’s voice there are reassurances of safety and security, things that Kendall hasn’t believed in since his life began putrefying around him. Moonbeams permeate James’s skin, turns his cheeks the color of bone, but no light can wash away the certainty of his words. They spin off his tongue, honey sweet, but poison, fuck, because this could end everything.  
  
Kendall might be hyperventilating. Just a little bit. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight, and waits for the touch of James’s mouth, but it doesn’t come. Kendall cracks an eyelid and sees James watching, amusement dancing across his features. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” Kendall admits, but his voice is surly. “And you’re making fun of me.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“James.”  
  
“I’m not,” James insists. His hands move to fist in the collar of Kendall’s Hawaiian shirt, crumpling exotic flowers, a sacred heart bleeding across his knuckles. He yanks forward, knocks their foreheads together and warns, “Look, I know this ends in a hail of bullets. I know we should stop.”  
  
“We definitely, definitely should,” Kendall agrees, hissing when James licks out, flicking wet against his lower lip. Kendall’s eyes flutter closed, and is he breathing? He needs to breathe.  
  
He can’t remember how.  
  
“Kendall?” James’s voice is shakier than it should be, more uncertain that Kendall ever remembers hearing it. “I don’t want to stop.”  
  
“I-“ Kendall doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because everything he wants is skewed, jumbled, and it will all come out sounding like a whimper. His hands hover over James’s waist, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall’s fingertips press into his skin.  
  
It isn’t enough. Not by a longshot.  
  
James kisses him hard and rough, moves from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. He tongues his name against Kendall’s jugular, bites down until the word turns to a bruise. He works his way south, traces the skin stretched tight across Kendall’s collarbone, and that is when Kendall hears a noise.  
  
It is the crunch of a footstep out in the alley, and it makes his spine go stiff with fear. Kendall’s gun is in his hand before he even knows what he plans on doing with it, because for all his training with marksmanship, he has never, ever, ever been so hyperaware and terrified in his life. If someone sees them, god, it would be apocalyptic, and this is an awful idea, a terribly horribly awful idea and-  
  
James’s hand lands heavy on his shoulder and Kendall has to force his finger not to startle on the trigger.  
  
“There’s nothing out there.” James says it quietly, like he’s talking to a skittish animal. Kendall lowers his gun, but he doesn’t release his grip because James is not omniscient. He strains to see out, into the darkness, feet squared on uneven concrete. The breeze coming in from the ocean is colder than anything Kendall’s felt in a long time, dancing chilled fingers across his shoulder blades, and it’s too dark to sight anything other than the empty sockets of window-eyes, the familiar silhouettes of office furniture across the alley as inanimate and non-threatening as ever.  
  
Kendall is still tense.  
  
And then James drops to his knees.  
  
Before Kendall can even fully acknowledge what’s happening, James wraps his lips around the slate gray barrel of Kendall’s gun and stares up at Kendall, altar boy innocence belied by the filthy, shiny wet he leaves behind. Kendall’s blood rushes away from his head so quickly that he’s dizzy with it.  
  
“What the fuck?” He asks helplessly, not daring to move an inch. He’s got prayers in his head and his finger still on the trigger, and no idea if it will even matter. Even if Kendall could talk to the Father who art in heaven, and Mary, full of grace, he hasn’t been to church in a long, long time, and his whole body is the kind of tired that makes him tremble and shake.  
  
Or maybe that’s James quaking through his bones, James who is staring up at him like nothing bad will happen, like he believes that god loves no matter what. That’s what Kendall learned when he was small, and the ideas people get as children are hard to shake, like fairy tales and Santa Claus, like pretty boys who kneel all princely but use their mouths all obscene. James’s cheeks have gone hollow, sucking gunmetal and gray, and oh, he lips along the length of the slide deliberately, with purpose.  
  
There is a sound, guttural, low, and Kendall doesn’t realize it’s coming from him until he sees the satisfied crinkle at the corner of James’s eyes. He pops off and circles his tongue around the muzzle, and Kendall reels away so quick he stumbles into a wall. Old brickwork crumbles behind his back, hitting Kendall’s boots like drops of rain.  
  
He says, “You don’t get to do that,” insists it half hysterical, never wanting James to put his life in Kendall’s hands like that. But James doesn’t let him escape, gets a hand on either side of Kendall’s hips quicker than Kendall can blink. He is pressing rough against him, and fuck, Kendall can feel him, a heavy, hot weight on his pelvis, and it makes Kendall want, want, want. It also sends terror skittering through his limbs, and he is caught, frozen, letting James rut against him without giving anything back.  
  
James says, “Don’t do this. Don’t be scared. You face down fear, Kendall. You never run from it.”  
  
He handles Kendall like he might a child’s toy, and Kendall has to swallow hard around the tornado in his stomach, threatening to climb up his throat and assault the whole wide world. He tries to draw a breath, but the wind in his lungs won’t let him get more than a hint of air, and James’s face is so close, too close. He laughs instead, and it is maniacal, it is not him at all, but, “What are you talking about? We ran all the way here.”  
  
James shakes his head vehemently as night bruises the sky, darker and darker still.  
  
“No. We left Minnesota because we had no one left to bury. That wasn’t running. It was letting go.”  
  
Kendall says, “Okay, okay,” and punctuates each word with a soft kiss because he is hot, and horny, and James has a point.  
  
Besides, this is no longer something he can run from.  
  
James kisses him desperate, and Kendall kisses back frantic; the night holds so many secrets. One more cannot hurt. He shoves James’s t-shirt up and over his arms, rough, pressing into the planes of his body, and in return James’s hips mimic the waves rolling into shore, crashing and thunderous. That is also the feeling it sends spiraling through Kendall’s chest, a boom and a roar, chaos beneath his ribcage.  
  
James says on a tremulous breath, “I need you to touch me. Please.”  
  
And at first Kendall doesn’t get it, because he _is_ touching James, running his nails against the short hairs on the back of his neck, marveling at the solid shape of his shoulders, feeling every indent of his ribcage and his spine. What more can he possibly do? But with the next crush of James’s pelvis, he gets what it means, and he pants against James’s collarbone, the question he really wants to ask dying on his lips.  
  
He does not ask how, or why, because James’s hands are everywhere, too close, squeezing painfully around his heart. All that Kendall manages is, “Not on the balcony.”  
  
He is not so far gone that he’s forgotten the night has eyes everywhere.  
  
James walks Kendall into the cheery light of their living room, candle flame making the shadows against their peeling walls dance back and forth, a tangled waltz, like how this all started.  
  
“I should never have danced with you,” Kendall mumbles into James’s mouth, and James hums his agreement, fits their hips tight and keeps jostling Kendall until he’s stumbling through the black, gaping maw of their bedroom.  
  
Kendall gets a whole five seconds to battle off another burst of utter panic, but then James’s hands curve over his ass, squeeze skin and melt his bones. They both crash back against the closest futon, splayed limbs everywhere, and Kendall begins the whole process of relearning his best friend.  
  
There are places on James that Kendall never thought of as vulnerable before, the arch of his foot and the crook of his little toe, the winged place beneath his shoulder blade and the dip at the small of his back. There is the thin skin behind his ear, the knot at the base of his neck, the part of his hairline. Kendall’s lips catalogue each in turn, the pale freckle on his hip and the pert, pink skin of a nipple, and his mouth, that mouth, that completely unbearable, unforgivable, beautiful mouth. Bruised red and rough from kisses, James’s mouth burns against Kendall’s firebrand hot, and oh, god, there’s grace in giving in to it, folding against James and feeling his heartbeat kick out like a drum against his chest.  
  
There is James’s hand heavy at the small of his back. There is James’s nose nudging against his affectionately.  There are James’s lips sucking and pushing and giving all at once. James helps Kendall out of his shirt, pushes it down off his shoulders while Kendall straddles James’s thighs. It tangles on his elbows, pools there while heat radiates off his skin in waves, warming the leather pants beneath Kendall’s palms.  
  
He takes a deep breath. Another. It doesn’t help. His lungs are desert dry.  
  
“Were you with Mercedes, today?” James asks, hand pressed tight to Kendall’s skin, counting out his heartbeats, the hard-hitting one _two_ one _two_ of Kendall’s racing pulse.  
  
“Jealous?” Kendall retorts, and it is a joke, but it is also an honest question, because James so rarely allows himself to feel inferior about anything.  
  
James’s hand grows weightier, his gaze possessive, and he says, “Absolutely, yes, you have no idea,” which, no, Kendall does not have even a little bit of an idea. But the thought of it warms him anyway.  
  
James bites Kendall’s lower lip, sucks it into his mouth and soothes the burn with his tongue. He murmurs, “What did you do with her?” and Kendall knows better than to answer, he does, honest.  
  
Knowing does not stop him from retorting oh-so-maturely, “None of your business.”  
  
If he sticks his tongue out to wet the contour of James’s mouth for emphasis, stealing a kiss that turns rough and filthy, then it’s not like it’s strategic. Just because Kendall knows exactly how to irritate James doesn’t mean he’d do it on purpose, in bed, simply to see how James would react, how he’d grind his body up, obscene, how he’d take all that passion and anger out on Kendall instead of some strange girl.  
  
James tugs at his hair, yanks at his clothes until the seams rip, and his mouth is a burning ember, a lightning strike, an anchor. Kendall can’t do much more than shiver and stay grounded.  
  
James says, furious, “I hate it when you touch her.”  
  
Kendall admits right back, “I can’t stand it when you bring girls here.”  
  
His nails gouge into the skin of James’s shoulder, ragged edges cutting lines, but James doesn’t appear to mind. He kisses Kendall on the mouth and murmurs, “I know.” His candor pisses Kendall off, even as James manhandles his shirt the rest of the way off of him. It falls by the wayside in a flutter of red, blue, and orange.  
  
“Knew you were doing it on purpose.”  
  
He flips them then, hovers over Kendall and murmurs, “Clever boy,” punctuating it with a hot press of his mouth against the flesh of Kendall’s belly.  
  
“I hate being manipulated, James.”  
  
He sits back on his heels, the muscles in his abdomen shifting under skin. Kendall stares, and stares, and stares some more. He thinks he’s left his shame back on the balcony. Kendall pushes his hands flat against James’s stomach, thumbs framing his navel.  
  
James’s lips part. “You’re shaking.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Kendall,” James takes hold of his wrist, fingers against pulse points, and can he feel the erratic drumbeat of Kendall’s heart? “I won’t hurt you.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t understand why that’s even a statement that needs to be made. James was there through thick and thin, through all things beautiful and broken. He saw the landscape of hell and the scarred outer wall connected by chain links that once kept them from heaven. He stood by Kendall’s side through the blood and the sickness, the death and the fear. He is the cornerstone Kendall has built his life upon.  
  
He is James, and no, he would not hurt Kendall, not ever.  
  
“I’ll make it good,” James continues, and Kendall believes it because he has to. He unbuckles the sword belt, low on James’s hips. His fingers brush over the front of his ridiculous leather pants, over _James_ , thick and full. He gets as far as revealing the shadowy outline of James’s dick – no underwear, of course, who wears underwear with leather pants, _idiot_? – before he has to ask.  
  
“What do we do?” He is caught between fear and this ceaseless desire, scraping his stomach raw.  
  
James laughs and takes over, leaning back across Kendall’s body with practiced ease. He hovers over him, the full weight of his cock peeking out from leather, dragging against Kendall’s navel, but James does not appear to care. He stares straight into Kendall’s eyes, all hazel devotion and sweetness and says, “I’ll follow you anywhere, you know.”  
  
But that is Kendall’s line. James is always skittering on ahead, head in the clouds, stuck on infeasible dreams, and Kendall chases after him, trying to make them all come true. They’ve been running circles around each other across America, at each other’s heels even here, at the edge of civilization, and Kendall wouldn’t have it any other way.  
  
“And I’ll follow you,” he swears up and down and horizontally, all for the smile that breaks in sunset colors across James’s face.  
  
James makes a show of removing Kendall’s pants, shimmying his jeans down to his ankles and then straight off. Kendall’s cock bobs flushed against his stomach, but he does not shy away when James stares, openly. He is more daring now, devoted to following through with this. There is inevitability at their backs, steady hands that feel like fate urging them beneath the wings of their shoulder blades.  
  
There are lips somewhere near Kendall’s hipbone, James kissing the protrusion of skin and marrow, his teeth skimming hard-soft and making Kendall buck. He teases, and Kendall isn’t surprised, because James has never liked anything more than showing off. He makes Kendall beg for it, and then he takes him half down his throat, muscles tight and wet and fucking incredible.  
  
James peers up through his eyelashes, his mouth stretched red. His tongue is slick against the underside of Kendall’s cock, moving, probing, and Kendall is very sure he’s never seen anything this hot before in his entire life; James, on his knees, swallowing around him. Every once in a while he will pull back to admire his handiwork, and Kendall can see the pink of his tongue in flickers and half-glimpses, rattlesnake fast before he darts back down to take the head of Kendall in his mouth.  
  
It’s unbearably good, James’s hair tangled between Kendall’s fingers, the green-gold-honey-brown of his eyes cataloguing every move that makes Kendall whine. James turns Kendall to cumulus cloud cover, spread much, much too thin, and he is an unexpected lightning storm, sparking against the surface of Kendall’s skin. It’s nearly over before it begins, but Kendall tugs him up hard, let’s James’s teeth scrape across his belly and the ladder of his ribs before reclaiming his lips. He is dizzy, he is drunk with it. The taste of James’s skin is better than moonshine.  
  
He chokes out, “I want-“  
  
And James guides his chin up, steady. “Since when are you soft-spoken?”  
  
“I want you to-“  
  
He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because he’s only got a very, very limited grasp on what it is two men do in bed together. But James seems to know, and his eyes widen and his breath stutters. He promises again, “I’ll make it so good,” and Kendall can’t hold back anymore.  
  
“How do you know you can?”  
  
Embarrassment reddens James’s ears. He screws up his lips and his courage. He says, “I looked it up. Logan’s got all those books on anatomy and human sexuality at the apothecary. I got bored. I read.”  
  
“You read? Like actual words?” Kendall blinks, naked and stretched tight beneath his best friend. He is wound up like a finely tuned string instrument, but he still finds it in himself to state incredulously, “You hate reading.”  
  
James grins, rueful and sweet. He kisses the corner of Kendall’s lips. “But I liked the idea of doing this with you.” He hesitates, then, “It’s all I think about sometimes.”  
  
Kendall had thought he’d seen James’s face from every angle, blue-rippled and water soaked back home, golden in the cornfields of Kansas and pale with dehydration in the deserts of New Mexico, burnt from the harsh sun of Arizona and open, relaxed, and happy beneath the palm trees of Verona, but this is new. This is James, forbidden, losing control faster than Kendall thought possible. He’s got a palm hot against Kendall’s belly, another curved around Kendall’s thigh. Kendall’s dick is thick and swollen between them, its presence unmistakable, aching so hard and hot that Kendall can feel it in his bones. He bites out, “So show me,” and James does, drags a finger down the soft skin of Kendall’s inner thigh, following the path it traces with his teeth.  
  
He bites – pressure and the sharp dent of incisors – he licks wet and textured, and his hand reaches the cleft of Kendall’s ass right about when Kendall is considering begging him not to tease.  
  
He is forced to reconsider, shock a slap to the face, because up until now Kendall hadn’t really thought about what James showing him would entail. Just the idea of it makes Kendall’s dick, still slick with James’s saliva, wilt a bit, and he hisses, “Uh.”  
  
James bares his teeth, caught between amused and unhappy. “Changing your mind?”  
  
Kendall cranes down and presses a kiss against his hairline. He is appalled, but he is also curious, and between the adrenaline and the crushed way that James watches him, he is also a little braver than when he started out. He wants to see everything, the strain of the veins in James’s forearm, the tremble in his thighs, the way he bites his lip when something feels too good to be true. Quietly, he replies, “No.”  
  
The first probing touch of James’s fingertip makes Kendall’s nerve scream out, sharp pain and the agitation of discomfiture. They say it’s unnatural, abnormal, wrong, and yes, absolutely, this does not feel like fun at all, but. But, but, James is giving him a wan, imperfect smile, full of so much anxiety that Kendall wants to go to bat on his behalf, to scare off all the bad thoughts and waiting nightmares. He grabs for one of James’s wrists, kisses the flesh inside the curve and murmurs, “It’s fine. Keep going.”  
  
So James does, he plies Kendall apart with one finger, then two, and it gets easier. The notch of his joints no longer catch, sliding in easily right up to the knuckle. He reaches deeper, and there, oh fuck, oh god, and Kendall is babbling these words outside, swearing in all the ways he knows how. There is a hollow space inside of him, so deep and so secret he never knew it existed until now, until James nudges up against it. Pleased, James tries it again, retracting ever so slow, languid enough that it makes Kendall squirm. He draws it out, twisting his index and middle fingers so that Kendall can feel the imprint of James’s skin on the inside, right up until James is thrusting forward again, hitting him just right.  
  
Kendall says, “Fuck”, and Kendall says, “More,” and both times it sounds more like a moan. He’s not much for patience; he’s even less a proponent for self-restraint. He persuades James into adding a third finger, stretching him so much that it wavers between pain and intense, total pleasure, an electric spark that curls his toes and locks his fingers tight into the muscle of James’s shoulders. Never one to deny himself more of a good thing, Kendall babbles, “I’m ready, I’m ready, I want you, please.”  
  
“You’re not, it’s too soon,” James argues, his eyes darker than Kendall has ever seen, greedy as they blaze across Kendall’s flushed body.  
  
“It’s not, I am- I’m ready, come on, James, damnit, do it,” he begs, all reckless abandon. He wants James’s fingers in his mouth, James’s dick pulsing inside him, wants to be filled and wants to be fucked. He splays his legs wider in invitation, desperate, cock hard and red and completely on show.  
  
James’s mouth drops open, awe and astonishment written clear as day beneath the arch of his eyebrow, the pucker of his lower lip. He informs him, “You’re a shameless exhibitionist,” and Kendall is not even a little bit sorry for it.  
  
James crawls over him, his knees butting up against Kendall’s, and he’s still wearing those pants, skin tight leather spread open in the front, his dick visible in a way it wasn’t when he was kneeling. It is no longer a shadowy silhouette; this is the shape of the head and the curve of the shaft, pink-red and leaking clear at the tip. It drags against Kendall’s and that’s good, that’s actually really fantastic, but James’s fingers are gone and he’d like them replaced right god damn now please, so he arches up against James and whines, trying to shimmy his pants down his hips. The noise that James makes is obscene, a bitten off moan that reverberates in Kendall’s ribcage, the cold silver of his ring a solid reminder of reality against his collarbone.  
  
James jerks his pants down over his hips, revealing smooth stretches of skin and the defined angles of his hipbones, and Kendall thinks about how he shines golden and beautiful in the sun. He huffs a breath and licks his lips, aches in a way he is not at all used to. James doesn’t bother getting his pants much past his knees, can’t concern himself with the nuisance of tight leather or the tangle of bootlaces. He situates himself between the V of Kendall’s legs, the flesh of his dick bearing down on the juncture between Kendall’s thigh and his balls, and Kendall tries to cant his hips all helpful-like. James hisses and laughs at the exact same time, takes hold of Kendall’s legs and positions them in new and interesting ways. Kendall doesn’t so much mind the contortion of his body, because he can feel James pulsing against him, feather light. He wants that where James’s fingers were, urges him onward, “Please, come on, _please_.”  
  
Shakily, Jams exhales, and he presses inside of Kendall with the deliberate languor of someone savoring a moment.  
  
Kendall is not savoring anything. Kendall is gritting his teeth so hard that he thinks they might be chipping in his mouth. James entering him is one of the most unpleasant things he’s ever gone through, no wonder its illegal, why would anyone-  
  
James wraps his arms around Kendall’s middle, lips whispering soft against the skin of his throat. “Calm down.”  
  
His voice is in tatters, raw and broken, but he is soft and familiar and still very, very _James_.  
  
“You’re too tight. You need to relax,” James’s voice spikes with an edge of pain, but his mouth and his words stay tender, soothing, “Let me in.”  
  
Kendall’s heart jumps, a skipping record in his chest, and he can hear that echoed in the ragged edge of his breath. He stills, tries to adjust to the heavy weight of James invading him, and somehow, that works. James slides forward, centimeters at a time, until he is home.  
  
After that, every time he is absent, Kendall feels like razor blades have scraped him empty, a dull ache. When James’s hips stutter forward again it is better than anything he’s ever known.  
  
James’s body is a grenade, a gun, a weapon. He tears through Kendall, destroys him in every way possible. But James is also this; an artist, an architect, a creator. He rebuilds, restructures, smoothes down all the rumpled edges and collapsing dreams. He holds Kendall’s wrists against the flea-bitten mattress and growls against the thin skin of his right eyelid, “You’re going to come so pretty for me,” and Kendall’s knees reflexively lock, grind bruises against James’s ribs, right beneath his armpits. He’s such a creature of habit, and he already knows that James is a habit he’s never going to be able to kick.  
  
Being with him should feel like dying, but instead, it is the first real breath of fresh air Kendall has taken since before, since ghost stories and laughter that trailed off into the night. James is relentless, ruthless, taking him slow, then fast, then slow again, bringing him to the brink of it and then laying back. There are moments of awkward laced in between the brilliance, realignments of their hips that sends a hot red flush creeping up the back of Kendall’s neck, long seconds on end where they are too hot and sweaty and James has to pause in him, still, much too still, unused to the weight of his best friend. Kendall is overheating, sticky with sweat, but also he thinks he might die if James doesn’t move. James’s ring is cool, chain pooled against Kendall’s chest, and he thrusts into him again, picking up the rhythm like it never left. Kendall thinks _oh_ , and Kendall thinks _fuck_.  
  
He traces his tongue along the compass points of James’s neck; west and east to the hard muscle of his shoulders, South the ridges of his collar bone, and North, true North, right up into his hairline. He kisses everything he can touch, his body expanding and contracting. He feels like a dying star, about to fracture outward in a million, billion dazzling pieces.  
  
Into his mouth, James says, “You’re mine, and you’ve always been mine, and no one can take you from me.”  
  
“Yes,” Kendall breathes, because what else he can say? Between the words and the silky slip of James’s skin inside of him, he is fragmenting, he is gone. He licks into James’s mouth until the friction on his dick, trapped between their stomachs, is overwhelming, the way James fucks up into him more than that, and he is absolutely destroyed.  
  
James comes right after he does, his voice wretched and beautiful and screaming Kendall’s name.

  
\---

  
Kendall dreams about neon lights, about walking between electric blue lines of crosses. His goal, at the end of an aisle, is barely distinguishable, but he thinks it has a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.  
  
His footsteps are soft. Still, they echo back at him from heavy stone walls, and that name, that shape…why can’t he remember? He steps closer and closer still, and oh, there are flowers here, beautiful white lilies and Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft-petaled roses. The air smells sickly sweet, blossoms and something else, something decrepit that is both familiar and distressing. Kendall sucks in a breath, swallows down air like he is not getting enough, and he isn’t. He’s so, so afraid.  
  
His gun weighs down its holster, the leather biting into his skin through the thin layer of his shirt. He sees candles up ahead, stubby wax stumps, the wicks close to extinct. He wants to turn around.  
  
Bravery, or curiosity, or maybe plain abandon drives him forward, speeds his steps, and there is so much white. In some cultures, that means weddings. In others, it is the color for funerals. Which is this?  
  
The question pounds in his head, turns to a lethargic drumbeat in his chest. Which is this? Which is it?  
  
Which.  
  
Is.  
  
It?


	7. Subjects Bow Their Heads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Best friends," James agrees. "Forever. There is nothing you could ever say or do that would convince me not to devote myself to you, okay?"

Kendall comes to naked and wrapped in the hot circle of James’s arms. He can hear Carlos snoring softly from the other cot, and from the slant of thin light streaming through the window, he supposes Logan already came home and then left for work again. He wonders if either of their best friends even noticed the bare skin of his and James’s shoulders peeking from beneath the thin, ratty blanket they are sharing, or if they cared. The four of them only have two futons, and they’ve been falling asleep together, in varying orders, for years.  
  
Kendall still flushes an ugly shade of red when he sees how their clothes from last night are strewn haphazardly around the room – is James’s t-shirt sitting out on the balcony? – and he tries not to panic. The apartment’s always a mess. There is no discernible pattern to the heap of James’s boots and pants, shucked off finally, before sleep, or to the place where Kendall’s Hawaiian button down lays at rest. Excepting the heady scent of sex in the air, which is not precisely new, there is nothing that screams of illegality or illicit behavior.  
  
If there had been, Logan would have made a scene, probably, but trying to convince Kendall’s racing heart of that is impossible. He’s tense between his shoulders, stained by culpability, waiting for his own impending execution. He can feel James like gun powder residue all over his body, and it’s appalling, because it is James. He is safety and comfort and home. But he is also strangling Kendall with his proximity, with the play of his breath across the back of Kendall’s neck. Even though Kendall’s body aches just to the right side of painful, he ignores it, struggling free of James’s octopus embrace, shaking off his arms and his thighs and the tangle of his feet.  
  
He dons his boxers quickly, sneaking about the room with the air of someone hoping to escape an uncomfortable one night stand. Which, okay, the guilt and wave of misplaced loyalty is helping nothing. Kendall pulls on holey jeans and something comfortably flannel and bolts from the crashpad without ever glancing down at James and how very naked and vulnerable he is under the cocoon of the thin quilt.  
  
Carlos’s snores chase him down the stairs, thunderous and full of accusation.  
  
Outside, dawn is still stretching over the horizon. Any other day the sky would be bright with potential, but today it is the color of graphite, full of clouds bleeding orange around the edges, leeching jaundice yellow into the vaguest hint above of robin’s egg blue. Kendall’s got work, but fuck work. He makes tracks to the beach, to sunlight that probably won’t ever make an appearance and the crash of storm-tossed water and _peace_.  
  
Only, when he goes to sprawl out on the hot sand, shucking his t-shirt to the side, he notices the purple-blue imprint of fingers against his hips. A quick search of his body reveals more bruises and black marks, all suspicious in nature. Kendall resolves to keep his clothes on for the next few days, hiding his face in his arms.  
  
What was he thinking? Kendall is choking, his throat is closing up, and that is an omen if ever one existed, the uneven weave of imagined rope cutting into his neck, vertebrae set to snap.  
  
Human bodies are as complicated as a jigsaw puzzle, but they are also equally as easy to break. Kendall has witnessed it firsthand, time and time again, out in the wasteland of America, from the stench of rot in what were once Kansan cornfields to the bleached white bone that littered the back roads of New Mexico. He has seen violence, cold and calculated or manifested in the midst of enraged fits. Kendall hasn’t held any illusions about the softer side of mankind since he was a little boy, more concerned with dinosaurs and constellations than how to make it through tomorrow and the next day. But moving to Verona made him reevaluate evil, what it is and how it works. For Kendall, before, it had existed in the midst of riots, in the hearts of highway men, in hot, livid snatches of fury that turned the meek into murderers.  
  
Then he witnessed his first real execution.  
  
Out in the world, there were walls painted red with distinctive blood splatter. Bands of thieves and lunatics alike would corner innocents, rob them blind or worse, and when they were done they would line them up, little ducks in a row. Bandits do not take prisoners, after all, and survivors have very loose lips. Brain matter and fallen corpses marked the site of each death as symmetrically as headstones, and Kendall thought this was what the word _execution_ meant; brutality, decay, and practicality.  
  
He was part right.  
  
In Verona, the city as fair and beautiful as justice herself, executions also mean an audience. Jeering, raucous crowds, people drunk and people solemn, people who hate and people who fear, children and geriatrics and everyone in between. No firing squad was ever so theatrical, backed by loud proclamations or a frothing mob.  
  
The actual deed can take place anywhere. A rope strung over anything will do. But the first execution Kendall went to occurred in the middle of town, at the official Gallows. _Gallows_. That word is reminiscent of something very Old English, steps and a platform and a square of wood that would drop out of sight. Instead, Kendall saw a long, skinny beam of timber nearly three stories high, with this weird rope-weight contraption rigged up to it.  
  
They call it a counterbalance gallows, and the great thing about it is that it breaks necks more efficiently than the traditional kind.  
  
That’s what Camille told him, anyway, with only trace amounts of sarcasm in her voice. “A normal hangman’s noose doesn’t kill you right away, not always. With street lamps and platforms, a person can dangle there for hours at a time, asphyxiating slowly. This…isn’t humane, not even a little bit, but the weights take you up so fast that – well, it’s decapitated more than one person.”  
  
Kendall hadn’t given the mechanics a lot of thought then, too occupied by the circus of flesh and death, which he wanted nothing to do with it. But now?  
  
Fusillading still takes place in the city, in dark corners Griffin and Hawk’s men prefer not to police. Each time Kendall stumbles upon a body or three, he has to swallow back guilt and shame and infinite amounts of dread, because his first thought is always this: If it comes down to it, he’d rather die with a rifle at the back of his skull than a rope at the base of his neck.  
  
Ideally, of course, he’d prefer neither.  
  
Kendall wants to hate James for making him want him. He tries to cultivate loathing in the pit of his stomach, to bring it up big and strong like one of the palm trees lining the boardwalk. But he can’t escape the truth; it’s _not_ James’s fault that Kendall can’t stop thinking about him, and blaming James for how incredible he is would be counterintuitive.  
  
Also, hating James is kind of impossible. It’s easier for Kendall to hate himself. So he lies there, feeling sorry for himself, wondering if this has really changed anything. Probably not. Everything he’s done, from the end of the world and beyond, has been for James. And Logan. And Carlos. Everything he does from here on out will probably be the same.  
  
Kendall lifts his head, but the sky has no answers. The city sits in a crater of clouds, about to be swallowed by the true darkness of that storm. Blue seeps through in patches and holes, the sky dotted and ragged. It is no help at all.  
  
For a long time, Kendall watches the clouds gather black, but he is not in the least surprised when company finally finds him. He knew he couldn’t escape James for long. He is ubiquitous in Kendall’s life, in his thoughts, in his memories and his dreams. Besides, there’s only so far a person can run in a walled city. The only ways out are through Hawk’s men or into the sea, and there’s not any point. James was right last night; Kendall gave up running a long time ago.  
  
“Hi,” he greets dully, curling his fingers into the sand. Logan told him once that the beach consists of billions of tiny pieces of crystal, of garnet and quartz, chert and topaz, but for all that rock it is soft in the lines of his palms.  
  
James stares down at him, his figure an unreadable silhouette, haloed by the weak sunlight that deigns to peek through the gray clouds. He plops down in an inelegant pile beside Kendall, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, the line of his back painfully straight. He bunches his fists in the fabric of his jeans and says simply, “Hey.”  
  
He does not force Kendall to meet his gaze, choosing instead to stare out at the water, the waves slate colored beneath their frothy caps as they roll rhythmically into the shore. Kendall waits.  
  
When James does choose to speak again, he is careful, cautious. “I woke up, and you were gone.”  
  
The words don’t ring with blame, not quite, but there is a definite surly note edging James’s consonants. Gulls cry, circling overhead, loud and plaintive. Kendall doesn’t know whether to apologize or ask if James expected him to stick around and cuddle.  
  
Carlos wouldn’t have found that odd in the least, right?  
  
“I wanted to watch the storm come in,” he explains, and never mind that their roof has the best view for that sort of thing.  
  
James shrugs fluidly, from his shoulders to his wrists. “Why? It won’t rain. It never does.”  
  
True enough. Southern California’s endless desert heat rarely breeds any kind of significant downpours. There’s none of the rain Kendall remembers from back home; relentless, harsh beauty that threatened to drown the Earth, at least not often enough that it ever makes any kind of impact.  
  
James’s fingers unlatch from denim, tapping a beat from his knees to his thighs until they come to rest in the sand. His pinky brushes against Kendall’s and Kendall flinches, snatching his hand away.  
  
He regrets it the second it occurs. James’s eyebrows knit together, his teeth gouging into his own lower lip, turning the skin there off-white. Helplessly, he says, “Kendall. If you didn’t want this…”  
  
Kendall kicks his feet into the sand, toes digging down to the damp under-layer. He shuts his eyes against the barely-there sun and tries to reason out the flurry of rampant emotion tearing his insides to shreds. “Dude. Did you hear me say no?”  
  
James lets out a held breath, a gasp of relief. It melts his posture, turns his shoulders less rigid and his limbs less stiff. He scoots down in the sand, building a pillow for his head, and leans back into it. When he peers up at Kendall, his eyes are shining glossy with the end of summer, orange-gold matte. “Then what’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t know what this is.”  
  
“Since when has that mattered?” James inquires, and it’s not a bad question. Kendall’s never exactly been an advocate of the playboy thing, but he’s been with girls in an, uh, unlabeled, fancy free capacity.  
  
Mercedes, for instance, before her father got involved, and shit, _Mercedes_. Kendall has barely given her any thought, and now he is sick with it.  
  
Before Griffin passed down his royal decree, their relationship was more or less _open_. Kendall didn’t fool around with other girls, because monogamy is how he’s wired, but he’s pretty sure Mercedes had a fling or two going on the side. Which was fine, as long as she never read him in on it.  
  
Or mentioned it.  
  
…Kendall has trouble with these modern, new-fangled fuck-buddy dynamics, alright? He does not share well with others.  
  
Still, he wasn’t going to stop her, because it was nice to have the option himself, and it _wasn’t_ like they were for serious. But now? On top of everything else, he’s a cheater and a dirtbag, and that doesn’t sit well with him at all.  
  
For James’s benefit, he shakes off his mental meltdown. “It matters because it’s you, and me, and we’re not something I’m willing to throw away.”  
  
James cranes his head upright as a new group of clouds devour the remaining sun. Now Kendall can see the dark circles beneath his eyes, the red edges of a purpling hickey beneath his jaw. Kendall put that there last night while James’s dick moved rough inside him.  
  
Is it bad that he wants to do it again, and as soon as possible?  
  
James says, “You can’t break us, Kendall. You can’t break me,” and it is a lie, because human beings are fragile by nature. It doesn’t take very much; a rope looped around a neck, a strategically placed bullet wound. Bare hands can do the trick, if there isn’t another alternative. And in Kendall’s case, god, all he’d have to do is let a word slip to Griffin, or Mercedes, or a random stranger on the street. That’s all it would take – a single indication that James was making him uncomfortable – and he’d be broken, destroyed, dead and gone.  
  
“Worst case scenario, somebody finds out and we die,” Kendall tells James in the flattest voice he can muster, because the idea of James dying unleashes a wellspring of complete and utter alarm in his stomach. “Best, and you’ll get bored of me within the week.”  
  
He sounds like a heartless bastard, but only some of it is for show. James and commitment aren’t usually on speaking terms.   
  
James’s response is outraged and immediate. “You think that little of me? That I’m enough of a horny asshole that I’d be willing to risk your life for casual sex?”  
  
Protests leap to Kendall’s lips. Then they die quiet deaths. His nails bite into his palms. “You can’t deny that you’re impulsive.”  
  
“No, you caught me, that’s exactly it. I thought you’d be an easy lay,” James shouts, seething, furious, _loud_. Kendall has to tackle him into the sand to quiet him, palm pressed to James’s lips, his breathing harsh.  
  
“Shut up, shut up, shut _up_.” He glances frantically about for anyone who might have overheard, but the beach stretches empty for miles.  
  
James’s ribcage moves up _down_ quickly between Kendall’s knees, heaving with anger. He is glaring murderously up through his eyelashes, ready for a fight. Kendall instructs, “You can’t just yell shit like that,” settling his full weight on James’s chest.  
  
He’s probably crushing him, but whatever, this way James can’t go running up and down the coastline screaming about how he fucked a boy. See? Impulsive bastard.  
  
James mumbles something vile-sounding into Kendall’s skin, eyes spitting rage. It’s a completely inopportune time for Kendall to give into his childish impulses, but Kendall doesn’t let timing stop him from taunting, “I can’t hear you.”  
  
James plants his hands firmly in the center of Kendall’s sternum and shoves. It’s hard enough that Kendall goes flailing backwards into the sand. James is on his knees before Kendall can find his balance, up in Kendall’s face. Rosy spots of annoyance burn on his cheeks, the rest of his skin blanched with anger.  
  
“Hear this,” he hisses. “You’re my friend – my _best_ friend – and if you think I’d put you in danger because I’m hard up, you’re an idiot.” He sounds so intense, so sorely _hurt_ , that Kendall wants to pile every cruel thing he’s said back into his mouth and swallow it down.  
  
Instead, his mouth seems to be intent on speaking without the consent of his brain. Hollowly, he inquires, “Then what? If this isn’t about sex, why can’t you just-“  
  
He flounders, unsure how to finish the sentence. _Leave me alone_ is the exact opposite of what he wants, because life without James is miserable. He barely made it through the past few weeks, driving Logan and Carlos insane while he tried to avoid the crashpad. _Find someone else_ is all wrong; it stirs up spiny thorns in Kendall’s gut. The idea of James putting his hands on anyone else the way he touched Kendall the night prior makes him feel like retching, because James said, had promised, really; _you’re mine, and you’ve always been mine, and no one can take you from me_. Maybe it’s something James says to everyone, but at the time, Kendall believed it.  
  
He’d never wanted to believe anything more.  
  
And now he has no idea what to believe, what to do or what to say. He stumbles out, slowly, “If this isn’t about sex, then why me? You can have anyone in this city.”  
  
James softens, palpably, warmth flooding his expression. It doesn’t chase the hurt away, but the hard edges are gone. Still, a little roughly, a lot pissed, he says, “ _Kendall_. There’s no one in Verona I’ve ever wanted more than you.”  
  
“Why?” The timidity in his voice is pitiful. James is the only person Kendall would ever let hear him like this, weak and uncertain, nothing like a leader. “I don’t understand.”  
  
James takes Kendall’s hands in his without even bothering to check if there is anyone around to see. He massages his thumbs against Kendall’s knuckles until his fingers relax, flattening out and twining with James’s, however hesitantly. He forces himself not to glance wildly about the beach for spies, focusing only on the way James’s hair rustles with the wind, the warmth of his hands and the sweetness of his smile.  
  
“Why not? You are brave, and you are good. You’re the first face I want to see in the morning, and when I’m lucky, the last I get to see at night. You’re bossy and stubborn, and you think you can solve our lives if you try hard enough. You care more than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember, and I’ve wanted to kiss you _for as long as I can remember_. If you think I’m letting you go now that I’ve finally gotten the chance to do that, you are so beyond mistaken.” James takes a deep breath, ducking his head a little, so that all Kendall can see is the earnestness in his eyes. “I l-“  
  
Kendall can’t let him finish, can’t even dare to wonder how that sentence is going to end. He blurts, “I’m engaged, James.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Not super ecstatic about that.” James breathes hard, sharp. “I get why you’re going along with it. I do. But – I need you to believe me. I’m not trying to toy with you. I’m not going to meet a girl and get over this. You’re it, Kendall. I’ve been waiting, forever, for you to get that.”  
  
He is so open and earnest that Kendall is winded by it, his heart stuttering beneath his ribcage. “You don’t do this. You don’t do monogamy, or settling down, or one person for the rest of your life.”  
  
“Then why haven’t I ever left?”  
  
“What? That’s not- we’re friends.”  
  
“Best friends,” James agrees. “ _Forever_. There is nothing you could ever say or do that would convince me not to devote myself to you, okay?”  
  
Kendall squeezes James’s hands, still so uncertain, so very lost.  
  
James says, “Look. At the party at Griffin’s, you said the world is tragic. And you’re wrong. The sun is shining, kind of, the waves are definitely crashing, and you’re the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen. What’s tragic about that?”  
  
Kendall doesn’t know. He can’t deal with life or with James when they both insist on being so unbearably beautiful. “Uh. That was a really good speech. I see why you charm all the girls.”  
  
“Nah, that’s all charisma and raw talent. There’s not a lot of talking involved.” James cocks his head to the side, grinning crookedly.  
  
Kendall battles back his jealousy. Instead, he says, “I wouldn’t mind going home and not talking.”  
  
James’s lips part. “Ah. Um. Carlos is still there.” He hesitates. “I might know a place we can go.”

  
\---

  
Kendall ends up with his palms braced against concrete, his hips cocked while James thrusts into him and the sky rips open and pours. The abandoned parking garage is like a cave, every surface damp from the sudden onslaught of rain, concrete slippery beneath his feet. Each sound Kendall makes echoes back at him from a million different angles, amplified and turned alien. When he comes it is loud, his voice bouncing around him, harmonized with James’s, and both of their cries are lost beneath the pounding, endless rain.

\---

  
They’ve barely been inside the apartment for five seconds, soaked down to the bone, when Logan cocks an eyebrow and asks, “Things going well with Mercedes?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re humming.” He makes a face.  
  
Kendall freezes, debating what to say. James actually flushes and goes about hanging his coat on the open door of the bedroom. Carlos is the one who saves the day, swatting Logan’s butt with a spatula of dubious origin. “Don’t listen to Logan. He’s grumpy because he never gets any.”  
  
“When did we get a spatula?” Kendall asks out loud, too relieved and trying to hide it. “We don’t need a spatula.” He turns to James, who is very interested in the state of his sopping wet jacket. “Are we making pancakes? I cannot think of a single reason one of you would buy that thing.”  
  
Logan whimpers about his injured ass, gritting out at Carlos, “At least I’ve had a girlfriend. The healthiest relationship you have is with your right hand.”  
  
“Guys! Spatula? Waste of money?” Kendall tries.  
  
“I didn’t buy it, I found it, and it’s a great fly swatter.” Carlos emphasizes his point by attempting to slap Logan’s ass, again. “And I’ve totally had relationships, okay.”  
  
“Imaginary girlfriends don’t count,” Logan taunts, dancing out of Carlos’s range.  
  
Indignant, Carlos retorts, “I’ll have you know, I’m seeing someone.”  
  
“Since when?” James pipes in incredulously, finally over his embarrassment.  
  
“For a few weeks.” Carlos’s stance shifts. He is laced with nervousness. “Her name’s Stephanie, and she’s really pretty. Really, really…”  
  
“You know seeing someone doesn’t just mean that you can see someone from across the room,” Logan inquires, while James simultaneously asks, “Does Stephanie know you’re seeing her?”  
  
“You guys are cruel, and I am wounded. Wounded, do you hear? This is me, injured and in pain.” Carlos clutches his hands over his heart, staggering.  
  
Kendall’s laughing so hard that he doesn’t hear the door swing open until it hits the wall. He nearly jumps out of skin, struck by the sudden, wild idea that it is Hawk’s men, come to drag him to the scaffold, but the fear is chased away as quickly as it came.  
  
Camille stands in the doorframe, her hair carefully curled. She’s wearing steel-toed boots and a flower-print sundress, short enough that the thigh holster of her gun peeks out from beneath the skirt.  “Come on, imbeciles, we’re going to a party.”  
  
“Not interested,” Kendall says, crossing his arms in an attempt to calm his racing heart. It doesn’t work.  
  
Camille rejoins, “You should be interested. Arthur Griffin is putting on a fair.”  
  
“A fair?” James asks. “But it’s pouring.”  
  
Only, it’s not. Out the window they all can see that the rain has tapered off, although the storm hasn’t quite fled yet. A cliff of slate gray clouds stretches overhead with a sheer, dark drop-off right around where the ocean should be, though they can’t see it from the crashpad. That wall might be fluff or it might be the remnants of the monsoon, but either way it looms in the horizon like a sick fantasy waterfall.  
  
“Yeah, no, still. I’m not feeling super festive,” Logan says, and no one is surprised. Logan’s idea of a good time involves candlelight, some watered down hot cocoa, and a thick volume of scientific theory that only about three people on earth really understand.  
  
“You have something better to do?” Camille tosses her hair, the curls tangling on her fingers momentarily before falling across one bare shoulder. Logan follows the gesture with his eyes, dark and wanting. “Pool at L’Amour, again? Guys, this is an actual fair. There are _rides_ and clowns and acrobats. There’s probably a freak show with a bearded lady.”  
  
“Oh, hey, Logan’s mom,” James comments. The glare Logan shoots him could pierce Kevlar, probably, but James is blissfully oblivious.  
  
Camille claps her hands. “Exactly. Come on guys, let’s go see Logan’s kinfolk.”  
  
“My kinfolk aren’t circus people,” Logan grumbles, but he is not very loud. A smile is tugging at his mouth as he stares at Camille.   
  
Carlos snorts, “Could have fooled me,” brandishing his spatula. Kendall plucks it neatly from his grip and drops it on the counter.  
  
“I think we’ll just leave this here.”  
  
“Hey!” Carlos protests, making grabby-hands. “How am I supposed to defend myself against Logan’s baseless accusations now?”  
  
“Well, you do have a gun,” Kendall reasons. Logan squeaks indignantly. “Now come on, you heard the lady, we’re going to visit Loginator’s long lost cousins. Snap to it.”  
  
“Bossy,” Carlos admonishes, but he obediently begins searching for shoes.  
  
“Hot,” James murmurs, leaning over Kendall’s shoulder to grab…uh…something. Possibly the spatula, which is not coming to the fair with them. Either way, Kendall stills, a warning in his eyes.  
  
James simply grins, wickedness lurking at the corners of his lips, and all Kendall can think about is James’s mouth all over his body, only a few hours before. He groans without meaning to, jostling James away with his elbows.

  
\---

  
The alley leading away from their house is slick, shining, wet from the earlier downpour. The tread of Kendall’s boots slips over the grainy surface of the asphalt. Everything smells of dampness and mold, wet dirt and the distant but distinct stench of low tide, amputated crab legs and rotting kelp.  
  
Camille is humming something from the radio under her breath, one of Gustavo’s discoveries, Kendall thinks. Although there are other studios around, Gustavo is the one with the Midas Touch. He turns every artist he comes into contact with into gold. After a beat, Kendall joins in, singing along. The bare wings of Camille’s shoulder blades flex as she breathes, and although she’s mildly off key, it still sounds very pretty. Pretty enough that James, Logan, and Carlos barge into the tune, building a melody between them, turning it and changing it until it is something all their own.  
  
The song crashes down around their ears when they come within sight of the boardwalk lining the beach. It is transformed. More people than Kendall has seen out after dark in a long, long time line the splintered wood, clutching candles and flashlights. They are a stream of glittering golden light, veins of it like the insets of a gold mine. All of them edge towards the pier at the far end, where lanterns strung like embers burn against the length of the entire thing, an eerie carnival that definitely did not exist a few hours before.  
  
This is _life_ , here, at the edge of civilization.  
  
James tugs them all forward. He always wants to be at the center of everything.  
  
“Now where do you think they got the Ferris Wheel?” Camille asks mildly, her eyes lit blue-white-red by the giant bulbs glowing in the distance.  
  
“Screw that, where’d they get the electricity?” Carlos demands, wide-eyed.  
  
It’s not a bad question. Verona has a power grid of its own, tiny, and manned by Hawk’s men, for necessities only, like the radio. Even places like Carlos’s body shop and Griffin’s mansion are lit by candlelight and jerry rigged gas lamps. But this entire fair sparkles with real, live light.  
  
“Griffin probably has generators ferreted away for special occasions,” Logan says.  
  
Kendall’s forehead furrows. “Is this a special occasion?”  
  
“Sure,” Camille replies. Then, “Come on, Kendall. This fair’s in celebration of _you_.”  
  
“What?” His tongue feels too thick for his mouth. James is abruptly glowering, face cloaked with darkness.  
  
“You and Mercedes.” Camille grins, glancing wistfully at the Ferris Wheel. “Must be nice, marrying rich.”  
  
“Yeah.” James echoes, “Must be nice.”  
  
Camille catches on quick. That, or Kendall looks really confused. “You didn’t know?”  
  
“I must have…forgotten.” Now that Kendall thinks on it, he vaguely remembers Mercedes mentioning something about her daddy buying her a fair, but Kendall was too distracted by James’s shunning to pay attention to anything but his own mental monologue.  
  
He’s the worst fiancée ever.  
  
Kendall catches James’s eye and thinks that he’s the worst friend ever too.  
  
The plywood of the boardwalk creaks and heaves when they step up onto it, giving every indication that it might cave in beneath their weight, but the shaky legs of the pier continue to hold. At the entrance, near the first brightly lit carnival booth, a hunched figure in a robe of something about as well made as burlap tries to shove a pamphlet into Kendall’s hand.  
  
He gently pushes it back, with a stiff _no thank you_ , and walks on. Camille says, “They’re everywhere now.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“I don’t know what they’re called, but I know what they want. Legislation.”  
  
“In Verona?”  
  
“Haven’t you read their pamphlets?” Camille lowers her voice, and it is hard to hear her above the whir of machinery and the garish sound of jack-in-the-box music. “They’re trying to get the citizens of our fair city to take their bodies back. Their rights.”  
  
She sounds admiring, and also scared.  
  
Kendall asks, “How have Griffin and Hawk and the CC not wiped them out yet?”  
  
“I don’t think they can find them all.” Camille pauses. “It’s not a bad idea, but they’re carrying it out all wrong.” Something mocking flashes over her face. “May grace light your way,” she mimics with a curtsy.  
  
It doesn’t suit her. Not when the cold metal of her gun flashes tantalizingly against her thigh.  
  
“Guys, is a fried sausage like a corndog?” Carlos asks eagerly, pointing to one booth that advertises all kinds of fried deliciousness.  
  
“Let’s find out,” James tells him. He pulls Carlos along by the crook of his elbow, the smaller boy bouncing on the toes of his sneakers. Kendall watches them go, watches _James_. The dark corners of his eyes, heavy with lashes, the thickness of his collarbone beneath his v-neck shirt, the way his dark jeans hug his ass…that last one distracts Kendall quite a bit.  
  
He walks the length of the boardwalk with Camille and Logan, trying to clear his head. Out in the distance, ships bob off the shore, glowing green with witch light, foxfire and will o’ the wisps in the distance. They’re probably how Griffin moved the carnival equipment up the coastline so quickly, without anyone noticing. Kendall definitely did not see the giant, skeletal structure of the Ferris Wheel this afternoon.   
  
A voice calls out, “Kendall!” and suddenly Logan and Camille have decided to make themselves scarce. The voice belongs to Mercedes, who flings her arms around Kendall’s neck and nearly bowls him over with a wet, sloppy kiss that draws him in despite himself.  
  
When she pulls back, she declares, “This is ama- _zing_ ,” spinning on her heels so that her dress balloons out around her, hair a dervish. She is gold and white and glittering, and maybe Kendall should be thinking about how badly he’s betrayed her, but instead he is caught by how much he still likes her.  
  
When he doesn’t say anything, she backtracks and asks, “No? Is it too much?”  
  
“It is, uh, pretty grand,” Kendall tells her. All around them people brush shoulders, elbows, knees, all with perfect courtesy. It’s hard to imagine that any of them would ever riot, or cheer for an execution, or mug you in a back alley. Tonight, everyone is lit from within.  
  
Mercedes’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Daddy’s really happy about shackling me down, I guess.”  
  
She says it with more fondness than Kendall knew anyone can have for Arthur Griffin, and he feels stupid for it. Mercedes and Griffin might have waged a cold war over this whole engagement thing, but they’re still family. They still love each other. They have to; that’s what family does.  
  
At that moment the deep, aching wound that is Katie and Kendall’s mom twinges. He never stops feeling their absence, not really, but times like this it is worse. “He’s happy for you, I think.”  
  
She laughs, as self-deprecating as Mercedes ever gets, which is barely. She’s too smart to second guess every word that comes out of her mouth, and Kendall envies her for it. He tries every day to look as confident as Mercedes is. “When I was younger, Daddy used to give me all kinds of things. A Barbie dream Jeep. Diamond earrings. A puppy. I never really thought about how that would escalate. Especially not after the apocalypse.”  
  
Kendall says, “If my mom was here, she’d be trying to throw a gigantic party every day too. We were never, uh, well off, but she tried to give Katie and me everything.”  
  
“Who’s Katie?”  
  
Has he actually never told her? Kendall swallows. “She is – was – my baby sister.”  
  
Mercedes’s eyes widen, beautiful, brown, and thunderstruck. “Oh. Oh god, I’m sorry. I didn’t-“  
  
“It was a long time ago,” Kendall says, trying to keep the sharpness from his voice. He doesn’t quite succeed.  
  
A reply sits on Mercedes’s pretty lips, ready to fly, but at that moment, Griffin finds them, his faithful dog Jett right on his heels. He booms congratulations at Kendall and talks about getting him a taxidermy collection of his very own, which is simultaneously scary and reminds Kendall of sitting in Griffin’s office, that day of the interview, beady glass eyes following his every move. Then, as quickly as he came, the man whisks Mercedes off to the Ferris Wheel. “A father-daughter ride. For old time’s sake.”  
  
“It’s not like I’m going anywhere, Daddy,” Mercedes says, eyes bright, and maybe a little sad. Griffin tilts his head towards her, the strangest expression on his face.  
  
“You’re growing up.”  
  
Kendall thinks that Arthur Griffin grows more human every day that he knows him.  
  
The down side of Daddy and his little girl having fair fun is that they leave Kendall alone with Jett. Search as he might, Kendall can’t spot Camille, Logan, Carlos, or James in the massive crowd, most heads cloaked in the anonymity of darkness. Warily, he says to Jett, “So.”  
  
Jett bares his teeth. “You know, once upon a time, I was supposed to marry her.”  
  
That isn’t what Kendall was expecting at all. He tries to think up how to respond. The only words he finds are, “Do you love her?”  
  
“No.” Jett shrugs, so casual about it that it’s grotesque. “Love is useless. It ends. You break up or you die, and either way, bodies are left on the ground.”  
  
“That’s a pretty fucked up way of viewing the world,” Kendall tells him, scandalized.  
  
“But it’s also true. Every love story turns into a ghost story by the end. My way’s more practical. Marry someone rich and powerful, and at least you get buried with nice things.”  
  
“Your way’s more pessimistic. Money’s not the only way to be happy.”  
  
“It’s the only way to be safe.” Jett’s eyes snap dark colors, oceans and ice floes. It’s hard to tell if he is serious or if he’s just trying to be intimidating. “This place is a pit of lions, and I will not be clawed apart.”  
  
“You’re implying I will,” Kendall says flatly. He resists the urge to wrap his arms around himself, to cover his soft tissue and squishy organs. There is nothing Jett can do to him here, on this brightly lit pier where Kendall is a guest of honor. His gun reminds him of its presence, a familiar bulge beneath his arm, and he remembers learning to shoot it, shoulders squared, feet stirring up dust. He’s a faster draw than Jett. He’s sure of it.  
  
“I’m implying that you better make sure the Princess never has any reason to throw you to the beasts.” Jett delivers his next words with unveiled menace. “I don’t love her, but neither do you.”  
  
For the thousandth time that day, shame floods Kendall’s mouth, bitter tasting and vile. “I care about her.”  
  
“And you think that’s enough? You’re living in a fantasy.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Jett beckons him to the nearest booth, a cotton candy vendor. They stand in line, not talking, for long, tense minutes on end. It’s only when they both have sticks swathed with pink that Jett speaks, and he is less spiteful than Kendall expects now, more pitying. He mumbles, through a mouthful, “If you were in love, it’d make this easier.”  
  
“Make what easier?”  
  
“Lion’s pit, remember? You think the people in power are happy that some nobody is snatching up the most eligible girl in this city? They’ve been throwing you parties and smiling so lifelike, so they must be overjoyed, right?”  
  
“Uh.” Kendall brushes thick granules of sugar from his mouth. “Are they not?”  
  
“You’re deluded.” Jett snorts and tears viciously at a chunk of his cotton candy. The strings of orange, gold, and yellow lights overhead sharpen his features, turn his cheekbones to razor blades. “You’re a pauper, and you’re marrying this city’s princess. S’not the natural order of things.”  
  
“I work for Griffin.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got a target painted on your back,” Jett replies emphatically, and when he grins, his teeth are stained pink. “Smile pretty, Kendall. The whole world’s watching.”

  
\---

  
James finds Kendall moping at the far end of the pier, keeping to the shadows behind a booth painted a dark blue, with peeling sideboards and a garish clown guarding its window. Children pile over one another to see into the stall, to throw darts into brightly colored balloons. They’re not very coordinated, but every once in a while Kendall will hear a telling _pop_.  
  
It makes him think of Logan and Carlos, goading one another on as they learned how to play the game at L’Amour. Logan excels at games that involve the word trajectory, while Carlos fails to hit any target smaller than a hockey goal, more often than not. Even so, they kept playing. They got better, at least marginally.  
  
James props his elbows against the railing. Kendall knows it’s him before he even turns to look at him, his handsome profile outlined by ghostly ships and strings of fairy lights. “This is a pretty seriously rad engagement present, dude.”  
  
“We might get a stuffed wildebeest next,” Kendall says, trying to gauge if James sounds angry or just resigned. It’s hard to tell amidst all the laughter and the noise, shrieking kids vying for prizes and vendors hawking savories of every kind.  
  
James asks, somewhat hopefully, “Stuffed like a teddy bear?”  
  
“Stuffed like someone shot it in the Serengeti and then ripped out its insides.”  
  
“Oh, that’s…lovely.” A snicker rips from James’s mouth, a grin following in its wake. James is the one who is lovely. Around him, the sounds of the fair pale, fade. There is nothing but the quirk of his lips.  
  
Someone so beautiful shouldn’t actually be able to exist in a place like Verona.  
  
He leans close and breathes against the shell of Kendall’s ear, “I hate pretending that we haven’t been together,” and sends Kendall shuddering against him.  
  
It’s deliberate, of course. James knows all the right things to say, all the right things to do. If every relationship ends with some kind of death, then James is a grave robber, looting what’s left behind. He takes advantage of broken girls, girls packing baggage, girls scared to love, all with his kiss-me smile, sweetness and charm.  
  
Kendall must be so easy; he’s just like them, really. Torn up over Jo, conflicted about Mercedes, unsure of the future and what it might hold. But James said he was serious, and Kendall wants to believe him, or maybe he has to.  
  
He cannot forsake the boy who stood by him against backyard bullies and schoolyard rebels and the end of the world.  
  
Carefully, Kendall says, “I’m not exactly a fan either,” leaning against the solid expanse of James’s chest, the rise fall of his ribcage. He wraps one arm around his waist, his fingers working up the taller boy’s spine through the thinness of his t-shirt. Every notch is sacred, flesh over bone, the building blocks that make James real.  
  
Kendall has to pull away too soon, ending their bro-hug before anyone notices, but it’s enough. James is wired, too focused, too intense. He pins Kendall up against the splintered railing. “I saw you with Mercedes, before.”  
  
“What was I supposed to do? Ignore her? Griffin was there, waiting for me to kiss his boots.”  
  
“The only person you kiss is me. Mine. You’re _mine_.”  
  
“Keep your voice down,” Kendall says, frantically, flapping his hands around, but James catches his wrists.  
  
The kids at the balloon dart booth wander away, clutching plastic toy guns and stuffed pandas, the never-alive kind. James says, “I want to scream it at the top of my lungs. I want everyone to know.”  
  
“Do you want to die?” Kendall demands, outraged and breathless, because the way that James is staring at him hurts. It is jagged glass, depth he didn’t know existed, and an achy, fragile thing that Kendall never realized James was capable of.  
  
“You’re mine,” James reiterates softly, and he says it just like Kendall imagines he’d say _I love you_. “And I’m yours.”  
  
Kendall can’t take his eyes, liquid pyrite, flecked through with warmer tones. He stares down at the ocean instead, the waves rolling beneath the shifty legs of the pier, onyx-dark and untamed. The idea of belonging to somebody makes him hot inside, when ideally it should piss him off. He’s not a toy, but James has always been flummoxed by concepts like personal space, and if Kendall’s honest with himself, he’s belonged to James long before this ever started. He and James and Carlos and Logan are all linked, a law unto themselves, a package deal. If Kendall could ever be anyone’s possession, he would be theirs, he would be James’s.  
  
He agrees, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”  
  
Satisfied, James rocks back on his heels, craning over the railing to catch a glance of silvery fish playing peek-a-boo in the black. He does not let Kendall move from his position, wedged between James’s body and the edge of the pier, but it’s okay. Kendall isn’t particularly interested in moving.  
  
“Do you remember what it was like before?”  
  
“Of course.” Kendall clings to those memories, even though he’s beginning to think that he shouldn’t, that before is a dream. Thinking back, it’s hazy, the colors too bright, the edges too soft, and Verona is all he’s known for a long while now. All reminiscing does is get him in trouble, like before, with Mercedes and Katie. He says, “I don’t want to remember. I’m here, now, with you.”  
  
James guffaws, loud, always too damn loud. “Look at you. The great romantic, being all…practical.”  
  
“You think I’m romantic?” Kendall bats his eyelashes mockingly.  
  
“Oh, yeah, sure. Let’s see. You’ve blown me off, avoided me, and told me multiple times that we’re going to end up dead.” James ticks off fingers way too gleefully. “You’re a charmer.”  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“I’m serious, it has been a lot of work to get into your pants, okay? Fortunately, I’m persistent.” James beams, hitching his hips against Kendall’s, and Kendall finally shoves him away out of necessity. They’re being too suspicious, acting closer than they should, and Jett’s words are a mantra in his head.  
  
The whole world is watching.  
  
Still, he can’t let James’s terrible accusations go without rebuke. “You threw pants at my head.”  
  
“You deserved it.” He gives Kendall a long look that makes him think of earlier, of James nuzzling against Kendall’s neck, his hand drifting down to skim across Kendall’s dick. “It was worth it.”  
  
Kendall shudders, wanting. He cannot hear the creak of the Ferris Wheel or the shrieks of the crowd or the crash of the waves. His own heartbeat is a roar in his ears. “Was it?”  
  
“Yeah.” James’s lips part, hot breath and a flick of tongue that Kendall wants to feel on his tongue. He reaches out without meaning to, and then remembers.  
  
Lion’s pit.  
  
“James?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Everyone ends up dead, eventually.”  
  
James breathes fire with a smile, at once otherworldly and recklessly gorgeous and Kendall’s best, most trusted friend. He speaks, and he is certain, more so than he has any right to be.  
  
“Then we better make sure you don’t have any regrets.”  
  
They are in this now, irrevocably.  
  
Together.


	8. We All Start Getting Worried

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jo huffs a sigh. “But?”
> 
> “But I can’t afford to be a revolutionary.”
> 
> One of the floor girls makes a dismissive sound, commenting, “The rest of us can’t afford not to.”

Griffin’s fair, they find out later, spiraled out of control in the wee hours of the morning.  
  
Kendall and the guys weren’t around to see it, having left the premises shortly after Carlos began moaning about too many fried sausages and followed it up by puking all over the tilt-a-whirl. Camille and Mercedes, on the other hand, were eye witnesses to the fighting that broke out somewhere around one.  
  
“It was nothing. Some guy threw a bottle,” Mercedes says nonchalantly, spinning her shot glass so that the cheap shine creates a cyclone.  
  
Camille glares at her. “Uh, no, shots were definitely fired.”  
  
Oddly touched that they stuck around, Kendall inquires, “Were you two hanging out together? Like, bonding?”  
  
Both girls laugh in his face, which is considerably less touching. They do, however, continue to relate the tale of the riot that broke out smack dab in the middle of Griffin’s shindig. Whether shots were fired at the beginning or at the end of the night, the results are the same; six dead and some seriously busted up equipment.  
  
“I saw some guy yelling _down with the establishment_ ,” Mercedes tells them both with no small amount of nose wrinkling. “I don’t even know what he was thinking.”  
  
“Probably that the establishment sucks,” Camille answers flatly.  
  
“And how is that my fault? A few carnival rides never hurt anyone.”  
  
“Really? You think? What about the people living in squalor, with no food or light or place to rest their heads? What were they supposed to think, watching all that excess unfold around them?”  
  
Mercedes lifts one perfect ash-blonde eyebrow. “Uh, maybe thank you?”  
  
Kendall winces. He understands the electrical supply is so much less than the demand. Even Griffin lights his chandelier with candlelight. And he’s grown used to living in a world where fire and batteries are king. Every three months, citizens of Verona are allowed to put in a request for a pair of corroded Energizers or Duracells, to operate a flashlight or a lantern or, preferably, a radio. Hawk’s men guard the supply chain, from the store of scavenged goods by the Wall to the traders outside, who risk life and limb to keep Verona stocked. Sooner rather than later, they’ll run out of abandoned Sam’s Club warehouses to raid. The only place left to listen to canned music or bask in electric light will be at the town center, where the miniature power grid still hums.  
  
Still. He’s never gotten used to stumbling around in the dark, especially not on the coldest of nights, when the wind feels like it dipped its hands in ice before caressing his neck. He has it good in his tiny, illegal apartment with his friends and their jobs, but there are places in Verona where law-abiding citizens are suffering. Mercedes has to see that, has to know that Griffin could make a difference, if he wanted them to.  
  
“Thank you?” Camille growls, outraged. “The generators for that stupid fair could light a city block, but your daddy hoards them away for special occasions while the rest of this city squats in darkness. Don’t even get me started on the food-“  
  
Mercedes narrows her eyes. “No, please, get started. I’m ready to hear a compelling argument about why we should give stuff away for free.”  
  
“Who would it hurt if we did?”  
  
“Do you know how much we pay to import, um, _anything_ into Verona? Daddy’s radio is the only thing that keeps money and vendors coming, and trust me, there is not nearly enough of anything that we can commit to acts of _charity_.”  
  
“Oh, but an entire circus show is okay?” Camille snipes.  
  
“Since visiting vendors were paying for it as an act of goodwill for my engagement, I’m going to go with _yes_.”  
  
Okay, then. As one of those poor individuals squatting in the dark _and_ a recipient of Griffin’s excess, Kendall decides it is time to intervene. He catches Camille’s fist before she can put it squarely in Mercedes’s face. He imagines he sees a flash of silver in Mercedes’s hand, but when he glances back it is gone, her expression guileless.  
  
Kendall does not stop staring. As far as he’s concerned, girls are a lot like feral animals in that a little deference, a lot of adrenaline-pumping fear, and some eye contact never hurt anything.  
  
“Was that a knife?”  
  
Mercedes bats her eyelashes. “Where would I hide I knife?”  
  
“I have no idea, but I am determined to find out.” Two seconds too late, Kendall realizes how much innuendo is packed into that statement, and it totally isn’t what he meant.  
  
Mercedes still smirks and says, “Later, baby,” and Camille makes a sound somewhere between disgust and homicidal rage.  
  
Kendall switches subjects quick. “Look, the important thing is that both of you are okay. You both are okay, right? No terrible gaping wounds anywhere? Nothing broken?”  
  
“Pshaw,” Mercedes says dismissively. “Dak, Jett, and Daddy wouldn’t let me stay for any of the fun.”  
  
Camille’s face reddens with fury again at the word _fun_ , but she grits out, “I can take care of myself.”  
  
Like Kendall ever had any doubt of that.  
  
She adds, “ _All of you_ didn’t have to leave so early. Logan could have taken care of Carlos.”  
  
He nearly bites down on his own tongue.  
  
Logan _did_ take care of Carlos, letting their friend whine and moan and curse badly processed foodstuffs while Kendall and James piled beneath the shabby comforter on one of the futons and let their hands wander. It’s humiliating, how little self-control Kendall possesses. The second he was presented with the opportunity to touch James’s skin, he seized it, desperately.  
  
Sure, he tried to be careful. Every time Logan’s boots creaked too close against the hardwood floor, Kendall went rigid. But it was preternaturally easy to feel safe beneath the darkness of the blanket, tucked against the nooks and crannies of James’s body.  
  
Kendall swallows metallic, his culpability a physical reaction. “I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Please,” Camille replies with an airy grin, her forgiveness completely genuine, “No one even missed you.”  
  
Mercedes nods along agreeably, and somehow, their total lack of suspicion makes Kendall feel worse. Betraying people’s trust isn’t supposed to happen so effortlessly.  
  
Laughter lights Mercedes’s dark eyes. “You missed a good time. Before the whole public outcry thing. I beat Camille at the rifle game. Twice.”  
  
Camille, never one for sulking, downright deflates. “She’s a total savant with a gun.”  
  
“Excuse you, that is finely honed natural talent.” Mercedes’s tongue, pink and wet, darts out against her lower lip lasciviously. “You’re welcome to a rematch.”  
  
Camille perks up. “You’re so beyond on.”  
  
Kendall nudges Camille with his shoulder, angst dissipating in the midst of all the barbs. “Are you sure your pride can take it?”  
  
Mouth dropping open, she gasps, “ _Traitor_. You know what? I can take you too.”  
  
Mercedes makes a rude noise, her delight in the idea of a challenge evident.  
  
Tossing her curls over one shoulder, Camille declares, “Both of you, the Lover’s Wall, sunset. I’ll sort you out.”  
  
Kendall has no doubt that she will. That doesn’t stop him from dragging James, Carlos, and Logan along as orange-red touches the sky, because he is nothing if not competitive.

\---

  
Carlos carries his dad’s gun, a practical black .40 caliber Smith & Wesson that he inherited when Mr. Garcia passed away. It’s holstered  
against his bare skin as he and Logan run half-naked down the road.  
  
They shove each other back and forth, continuing an argument they’ve been engaged in since they were five. Kendall doubts either boy knows what the original topic of dissent was, but they consistently find new things to bicker about. When they wrestle, the bumpy nodes of their spine protrude beneath skin, both of them too skinny for all the food they eat. Kendall tries not to let that failure feel like a direct reflection on him. He focuses on Carlos, on the black gleam at his hip.  
  
Figuring out how to fire a gun was fun, at first. Mr. Garcia taught them, with glass bottles carefully balanced on split tree trunks out in the isolation of the woods, the earth squishing soft beneath their feet. They were kids then, and the idea of using a firearm on anything other than the odd deer hunt was completely unfathomable.  
  
None of them were very good at taking aim, and that was okay. They didn’t even use real bullets.  
  
Logan and Carlos scream and they whoop, letting everyone in the city know that they are coming. The dark, brown leather straps of Logan’s holster stand out against his skin like strange tattoos. It houses a Walther P5c with an intricately carved wooden handle that he picked up in the Midwest, long after things went wrong.  
  
They stayed in Minnesota until they were fourteen, until Carlos’s dad was gone and there wasn’t anything left to care for or mourn. There were towns before Verona, places without walls, but inevitably, they fell to the wasteland. And somewhere in between them all, Kendall and  
James and Carlos and Logan learned how to shoot in earnest, because there was no other option but to take care of themselves.  
  
Kendall caries a Taurus PT 99 that he picked up off a corpse. It’s emblazoned with faded religious iconography on the grip, Our Lady of Guadalupe staring beseechingly into his palm.  
  
Or maybe she’s Our Lady of Lourdes; he’s never been able to distinguish between the two.  
  
The gun’s weight is a comfort at his side as he makes his way to the outskirts of town, past rundown shacks that barely imitate houses. They are just out of view of the beach’s abrupt end, at the monstrosity of a brick wall that indicates Verona’s border.  
  
This close to the edge, Hawk’s men are en masse, guarding the city from those wily refugees that might try to swim to shore. Most of them are out on the silver-blue Pacific, steely eyes scanning the waves for a hint of flesh, but there’s always a guard or two right near the Wall. Today, it’s Camille and a buddy or two.  
  
The sun dips on the horizon, meaning Kendall and the guys are right on time.  
  
Up ahead, Kendall stops short in deference for the Lover’s Wall. It’s one small portion of Hawk’s creation, but the people of Verona have reclaimed it, in a way. Blue and red and yellow, pink and green and purple, teal and orange and a blackgoldgrey. There are names and hearts and the word _love_ repeated over and over and over, a mantra of hope for everyone who has ever stood in front of it.  
  
This place exists for all the lovers that have ever walked Verona’s streets. Kendall is intensely aware of James, trotting behind him, Beretta 92fs in hand. He’s wearing acid washed jeans and a t-shirt gone loose and ragged at the deep V beneath his throat, but all the lazy ensemble does is remind Kendall how good James looks out of it. Trying to chase away the thought, he blinks against the light of the gigantic sun, the color of molten lava as it dips low over the city, threatening to burn them all.  
  
“Stop stalling, Knight,” Camille calls out to him. “Fortune favors the brave.”  
  
They line up in a row, taking aim at dented coke cans that still wash up on shore, from time to time. The ocean likes to remind humanity that pollution’s fingerprints will stick around long after everyone is gone.  
  
Camille squares her stance in the sand, the waterfall of her curls spilling down her back. She blazes with sunset colors, the orange-red light catching in her hair, blooming across the purple flowers decorating her sundress. She is fierce and otherworldly. She doesn’t miss a single target.  
  
Neither does Mercedes, dressed head to toe in white, ethereal in the sun’s dying golden glow. She smirks crookedly at Camille and reloads her clip.    
  
The waves are quiet thunder. Hawk’s guys jostle each other, placing bets on Camille with catcalls and hollers. She flips them off and gets away with it. Kendall doesn’t know how high she ranks in the militia, but it’s high enough that he’s never seen anyone even try to reprimand her.  
  
Next to him, James takes aim. His gun is every bit as flashy as his stupid, useless sword. The grip is white, shiny and rainbow polished like the inside of an oyster shell, and when he shoots the sunlight catches on a custom compensator that helps angle his shots.  
  
James is not really a fan of things that don’t sparkle.  
  
In the end, Camille, who is frighteningly competent at her job, outshoots them all five rounds in. Every single bullet lands dead center through the C on the old coke cans, a thin lip of red between the puncture and the curling white calligraphy. There’s a reason she works the fences.  
  
Mercedes takes a break, curling a hand around the back of Kendall’s neck and laughing, laughing. Her fingertips are pinpoints of ice, but her palms seep warmth through his skin. “She’s owning us all.”  
  
“Yeah, but. You look hot with a gun,” he tells Mercedes without thinking twice about it, because it’s a true thing. Mercedes might make a habit of flouncing around Verona unarmed, but she assumes the Weaver stance with confident, practiced ease. When she zeroed in on her target minutes before, Kendall was mostly just glad it wasn’t his face.  
  
The back of his neck prickles as though someone really has him in their crosshairs, but when he looks, it isn’t the business end of a gun he’s staring down. James’s grimace is nearly as bad, cheeks hollowed from biting inside, jaw clenched.  
  
It takes Kendall a full minute to figure out what he’s done now. Sussing it out shouldn’t be that hard, but hey, he’s a moron.  
  
 _I’m sorry_ , he tries to say with his eyes, but James is already funneling his rage into a line of Coke cans.  
  
 _Bang._  
  
 _Pow_.  
  
“James,” Kendall starts, only remembering they have an audience when the rest of his sentence refuses to come. How can he apologize for acting exactly the way he’s expected to?  
  
“Fuck you,” James retorts through gritted teeth. _Bang_.  
  
“What’s his trauma?” Logan asks Carlos, who shakes his head, bewildered.  
  
Surprised by the sudden aggression, Mercedes lowers her firearm completely, pantomiming surrender. “I’m out.”  
  
Camille frowns. “You’ve got three more clips in your bag.”  
  
“Thanks for the newsflash, Stalkerazzi.” Mercedes doesn’t say it unkindly, flashing Camille a grin. “I don’t want to get in the middle of his little therapy session, there.”  
  
Camille glances at James, worriedly.  
  
Each shot echoes back at them, thunderous. If Kendall could cover his ears somehow, he would. As it is, his head rings with the zing of bullets fired long after they’ve gone silent.  
  
When James’s ammo dries up, Camille stalks over to him before he has a chance to reload, murmuring something low and urgent. Mercedes leans back against Kendall and says, “You take me on the most romantic dates, Knight.”  
  
Her words ring too close to the day before; James on the beach, calling him a hopeless romantic. Kendall squeezes his eyes shut, his heart pounding and pounding. When Mercedes stands up on her tippy toes and plants a kiss on his mouth, he takes it because he has to, knowing all the while how easily the intricate clockwork of a heart can be stopped.

\---

  
James manhandles him away from Carlos and Logan the second they leave the beach. He’s rougher than usual, but it doesn’t stop Kendall from shivering, leaning into the touch. He doesn’t think he’ll get used to this anytime soon, not to the calluses on James’s palms, his big hands, or the surety with which he moves.  
  
“How mad are you, exactly?” Kendall asks, trying to gauge his reaction as he’s guided into an empty alleyway, bricked in on three sides, with no cover on the fourth.  
  
James is being careless. Kendall is too. This is how things are going to go wrong, one day. Being careful is already becoming a game, where they linger too long in the cavern of warmth created beneath the thin blankets on their futon or are okay with sharing stolen, desperate kisses in a back alley. Kendall doesn’t try to stop it. His hands slip over James’s hips, bone solid against his palms. His breathing fractures. His pulse jumps into his throat. It still hurts, being this close. It’s still forbidden.  
  
But forbidden translates as sexy, because if they haven’t gotten caught yet, who is to say they will?  
  
James’s fingertips are points of fire, searing the back of Kendall’s neck. He kisses him so hard and so deep that he’s dizzy with it, his head spinning with depleted oxygen and the reckless press of James’s mouth. Possessively, James knees Kendall’s legs apart, widening his stance until he fits properly against him, their dicks dragging through their jeans. Cloaked in blackness, Kendall goes with it. Yes, okay, definitely _yes_ , he will give him whatever he wants.  
  
Then James pulls back, shakes his head, muttering, “You’re so fucking stupid.”  
  
“Thanks,” Kendall replies, because he’d figured James would be way angrier than this. James pushes Kendall’s thin jacket off his shoulders, rough but easy. Kendall stumbles back until his shoulders hit the wall. “You really like manhandling me up against immovable objects.”  
  
James’s fingers still. “Is that a problem?”  
  
“There are worse ways to get laid.”  
  
Eyes flinty, James bites at the lobe of Kendall’s ear. He growls, “You owe me.”  
  
Kendall swallows, hard, ghostly gunshots reverberating in his ears. Right. He definitely owes James. But.  
  
Kendall’s pretty okay with the idea of James servicing him, but they’ve barely been together for two days; not nearly enough time to try it the other way around. The idea makes Kendall vaguely nauseous, jangles his nerves and turns his stomach. There’s something uncomfortably subservient about getting on his knees and putting James’s dick in his mouth. It makes him want to gag, and worse, what if he really sucks at it? It scares him.  
  
Which is dumb. He was scared of letting James fuck him, but that turned out to be one of his best life decisions, at least in terms of sexual satisfaction. Besides, James had enough courage to try sucking Kendall off. Anything he can do, Kendall can do better.  
  
Probably. Most likely. Hopefully, because Kendall really doesn’t want to lose James to his poor oral skills.  
  
He has a significant bump in respect for every girl he’s ever been with as he fumbles with James’s belt buckle and says, “Okay.”  
  
Not so encouragingly, James laughs in his face. “What are you doing?”  
  
“Repaying you,” Kendall says, trying not to sound too insulted.  
  
He must fail hard. This time, James full on snickers. “I appreciate the gesture, but, uh, forced intimacy isn’t the best building block for a relationship.”  
  
“Are you sure you’re James?” Kendall knocks his knuckles lightly against James’s skull, battling simultaneous relief and hurt. “Is this a bodysnatcher thing?”  
  
Sure, he’s not ready yet, but dudes don’t shoot down blowjobs. In Kendall’s experience, that is really not a thing that happens ever. He wonders if there’s something wrong with him, expression turning forlorn.  
  
“Kendall,” James says, laughter dying down. “Why are you always thinking these horrible things about me, man? I would never force you to do anything, or guilt you into it, or…I don’t know. I want you to be _happy_.” He nips Kendall’s ear again, licks the pinch away and works up until Kendall is squirming. Breathing hot against wet skin, James and murmurs, “When you blow me, I want you to want it.”  
  
His words spike light and warmth in Kendall’s stomach. Kendall licks his lips and tilts up on his toes to kiss James’s nose. It’s silly and affectionate, and he doesn’t feel the least bit ashamed about how happy it makes him to do it.  
  
Rocking back on his heels, he asks, “So what is it I owe you?”  
  
The grin dies off James’s lips.  
  
“I want to know where this is going.” Kendall’s stomach sinks. James’s cheekbones are sharp in the twilight, painted in shadowy brushstrokes of indigo, violet, and the pale, electric blue of starlight. He continues, “I told you. You’re _it_. But you haven’t told me…anything.”  
  
Kendall opens his mouth.  
  
Kendall closes his mouth.  
  
James releases him completely, not even trying to cover up his disappointment.  
  
Which, no. There are things Kendall wants to say, about how this is the already the kind of relationship that devours, that consumes. It goes to the dark place, where Kendal thinks he would lie and beg and steal, where he would do anything to make James smile; looking back, it always has. Like that time outside L’Amour, when Kendall stepped in front of a gun just to protect James, and how he would do it again, and again, and again.  
  
Anything to keep James safe.  
  
 _Anything_.  
  
Except for maybe telling him that.  
  
He opens his mouth again, but James has watched it all, flickering across his face. He cuts Kendall off. “You’re not ready yet.”  
  
“I-“  
  
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not – you don’t – it’s fine.” James cuffs his cheek, and when he smiles, it feels like a lie.

\---

  
The days tumble past with neck-breaking speed, October come and gone in a blink. Winter’s teeth loom in the distance, set to clamp down over California, bringing the date of Kendall’s wedding date closer and closer still. He spends his days locked up in the studio, patrolling the grounds or, more often, watching Gustavo work his magic on performer after performer. Kendall is less reluctant to voice his input to the grumpy producer now.  
  
Once or twice Gustavo even bothers to listen to him.  
  
Nights are different, whiled away in the heat and color of L’Amour, hustling pool tables with Logan or drinking other patrons beneath the table.  
Kendall stays very, very far away from Carlos’s cabaret, but if anyone notices, they don’t say.  
  
And then, later, there is James.  
  
James, who unlike Kendall, doesn’t appear to notice the chill in the air. He continues to waltz through the streets of Verona with his dazzling smile and his carefree charm. Kendall doesn’t know what it is that James does during the day, but at night, he still chats up Lucy and flirts with wasted girls. The only real difference is their routine lies in how he drags Kendall along to watch. During the evenings, James has become a steadfast fixture at his side.  
  
Alright, maybe that’s not the _only_ difference; neither of them ever brings anyone home but each other.  
  
Kendall spends less time with Mercedes, avoiding both her and the shame that dogs at his heels. She does not deserve to be treated this way.  
  
She doesn’t object to it either, watching him with dark, concerned eyes whenever he declines sex, but never once voicing her consternation.  
  
There’s no easy solution for the mess Kendall’s gotten himself into, but there is also no easy fix for the way James makes him feel. They have a whole new world of discovery between them; stolen moments spent jerking each other off slow, learning the shape of their bodies without clothes.  
  
James’s mouth on him is forever a revelation, come flecking the corners of his lips, and if Kendall’s first, eventual attempt at a blowjob lacks finesse, it’s not like James laughs in his face. He guides Kendall through it with fond, husky words, his voice scratched with want, his dick pulsing against the back of Kendall’s throat. Kendall had entertained the vaguest notion that James orgasming in his mouth would disgust him, but instead he swallows down the bitter salt of him with the strangest satisfaction, the way James tugged at his hair and fucked between his lips trembling through him like an aftershock.  
  
Kendall doesn’t remember ever spending so much time thinking about sex, but with James in the picture, it’s always on the forefront of his mind. He passes his evenings frantic, trying to get James in him, over him, on him, and as far as he can tell, James is every bit as eager for it.  
  
The problem with such intensity is that it makes Kendall blind to everything else, to any thoughts of the future except for how he’s going to get James’s pants on the floor. They never talk about the things that Kendall won’t say and Kendall never quite gets over his shame.  
  
He tries to figure out if he has anything else to offer, at least for now. There is one thing.  
  
Maybe.  
  
James always wanted to be on the radio. He was their original hope, back before Camille found them rotting on the other side of the fence. He was the _plan_. They’d get to the end of the ref line, sing for Hawk’s cronies, and everyone would see how damn great James’s voice was. All the pretty songs he crooned were supposed to be their ticket _in_.  
  
Then Camille whisked them to safety, and James’s singing was one more thing relegated to the back of a long list of more important priorities.  
Kendall never thought to ask why James gave singing up, because it wasn’t like he _stopped_. He sings over breakfast, he hums over lunch. He wraps out melodies when he’s bored or sad or trying to charm a girl. He harmonizes along with every song he dances to at L’Amour, or the ballads on the radio, or when passing a street musician. James is never quiet, not ever, so why hasn’t he followed it up?  
  
Kendall asks, one day, phrases the question as innocently as possible. “Hey. Why haven’t you tried to get on the radio?”  
  
In response, James blinks at him and says, “I did. I kept getting turned down.”  
  
He doesn’t appear to be especially bummed about it, but Kendall can tell it bugs him. Once upon a time James was going to be the biggest superstar in America, if not the world, and now he can’t even make it within the confines of a miniscule city. Why is that? Kendall can’t imagine anyone turning James down, for anything.  
  
He can, however, use this to his advantage. The next day at work, he talks to Gustavo. Talks being the loosest definition of the word, because Gustavo thinks most conversations should include an excess of yelling. Kendall isn’t sure if his point ever comes across.  
  
That night, he goes home, kisses James hard on the slippery shingles of the roof, and wonders if anything will come of it.  
  
James kisses him back, happy and oblivious. Winter creeps down the coast with stormcloud eyes and the distant ring of wedding bells, but in this moment, at his most vulnerable, all Kendal can thinks is that they should have been doing this much, much sooner.

\---

  
Kendall might be lulled into complacency, but the city never rests. Mercedes confront him on the first day of November with a brusque tone and a letter to take to the church, confirming their ceremony’s date.  
  
“But why can’t you do it?” He whines very maturely, half-sick of everything to do with this wedding. “I’m your fiancée, not your errand boy.”  
  
Instead of a snarky retort, Mercedes ducks her head, uncharacteristically shy. “Fiancée. I can’t get over that word.”  
  
She’s beautiful this way, soft and timid, but Kendall thinks he prefers her cocksure and too cool for anyone, even him.  
  
“Second thoughts?” He asks neutrally, not even daring to hope.  
  
“And third, fourth, and fifth. It’s not you, Green Eyes, it’s-“ Kendall waits patiently for her to tell him what it is, exactly, that makes a carefree warrior queen like her falter, but even their prospective marriage rites aren’t getting him past her defenses. “You know what? Never mind. It’s  
not like Daddy would let either of us back out now.”  
  
She has an exceedingly valid point.  
  
“Alas. I was hoping for more time to sow my wild oats,” Kendall says theatrically, wanting to wipe away the edge of sadness in her expression.  
He rubs at imaginary tears and stoically does not think of James.  
  
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “I didn’t ask for lip. Go on, shoo. Do my bidding.”  
  
Despite himself, Kendall snickers. “As milady wishes.”  
  
Clouds bathe Verona in shadows. The sunlight quavering through mostly dissipates before it reaches the ground, but the places where it touches down become golden spotlights. Up ahead, the church is big and ancient, standing in total defiance of all the old mission architecture around California. There is no white-washed adobe, no tier of bells, nothing clean or simple about it. Whoever designed the old broad was infatuated with Europe, with flying buttresses and intricate stained glass, and their creation squats amidst the cheerfully faded pastel sea chanteys and terracotta-roofed homes like an ornately adorned toad.  
  
Lacy white blossoms bunched in threes crowd around the entrance, too many trees vying for light in the shadow of the behemoth. So late in the year, most of the clusters are dying or dead but for a few lovely sprigs.  
  
Saints peer forebodingly down at Kendall as he ascends the big, gray stone steps, taking his measure and finding him wanting. He hasn’t had anything to do with religion for a long time; all the Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s he whispered beneath his covers as a child have done nothing to save him. Currently he and God aren’t even on speaking terms.  
  
That doesn’t stop him from genuflecting inside the door, cowed by the gigantic cross at the end of a long aisle. This place is eerie, evoking his dreams of electric and neon, of walking down this very aisle to a wedding or a funeral. He doesn’t like it. He is distracted by his own unease.  
  
Kendall does not see the thick, sticky substance he steps into until it slips beneath his boots.  
  
“What the hell?” He curses as he skids to a stop against a pew, solid wood bruising his hipbone.  
  
It’s blood, puddling right in the center of the aisle, too much to have come from a single human being. There’s so much it’s black, caked beneath the treads of his boots, the reflection of his face watery and dark in the puddle. Kendall thinks he’s had a nightmare like this.  
  
Instinctively, he steps back, feet squelching into the still-wet red, because he’s been avoiding situations like this for years. Good Samaritans often end up Dead Samaritans. But the church is quiet and still, the peace unbroken but for the garish red streaks on the tile.  
  
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out the gore, and tries to figure out what to do.  
  
“Can I help you?” A hard voice asks. Kendall’s eyes fly open, but he’s hallucinating. He has to be.  
  
The girl in front of him is clothed in plain, loose clothes. Her hair, sun streaked and dry, is twisted severely behind her head. Her skin has darkened since the last time Kendall laid eyes on her, blotched with freckles. She is still very beautiful.  
  
“Kendall?” Jo watches him with open shock for a beat, for two, and then her face fixes itself into something strange and resolute. She latches onto his elbow and says, “Good, you can help.”  
  
“Help with what?” Kendall demands, squeaking when Jo’s fingernails dig too deep. He hasn’t seen her in nearly a year, but she’s every bit as bossy as he remembers.  
  
“Just come on.”                                      
  
Jo follows the trail of blood into the room adjoining the main church, which turns out to be a hallway that leads into the rectory next door. The place is dark, even with candlelight flames burning high. Kendall can’t stop looking at her, at her once-familiar face and the determined set of her posture.  
  
“What’s going on?” Kendall asks insistently, scanning Jo’s clothes for traces of injury. There are flecks of red spotting her pants and the hem of her shirt, but not enough for this mess.  
  
“They came in through the side entrance, by the garden,” Jo informs him, and Kendall wants to demand _who?_ , but before he can get the words out, he has his answer.  
  
The rectory is a crime scene, missing yellow tape or flashing lights, but illegality still clinging to the air. Or maybe those are the screams.  
Pathetic, gurgling things, clogged thick with fluid. A girl he’s never seen before with heat frizzed hair and dark brown robes is trying and failing to hold down another. There are too many weakly flailing limbs keeping her at bay, even as she murmurs _calm down, it’s okay, please, we’re trying to help_.  
  
The woman stretched across the rectory’s dining room table is young. Emaciated. Infected. Kendall can smell the sweetness of her, the rotten stench only marginally overpowered by the copper taste in the air. Worse is her friend, propped in a corner, bruised feet emerging from beneath a stained sheet. Crimson puddles around the edges of the cloth; most of it congealed and foul.  
  
Whoever that is, they’re long gone and the unseasonable fall heat is making sure they all know it.  
  
“Help Jennifer hold her down,” Jo orders, brandishing a pair of tarnished forceps at Kendall. “We have to get the bullet out.”  
  
Mechanically, Kendall rushes forward to press his hands against the woman’s thin frame, trying to look at anything other than the wound gaping in the middle of the woman’s chest. The slap of his palms against skin soggy with blood makes an uncomfortable squelching sound, but it’s nothing compared to the wheeze of oxygen rattling the stranger’s throat, or the way she cries out.  
  
How is she still awake? He’s not a doctor-in-training like Logan, but even he knows that pain so acute should have long since lead to unconscious bliss. He looks at her skin, tinged yellow, near unnatural, recognizing her for a refugee. Under the raw, puckered edges of flesh, Kendall can count out the woman’s ribs.  
  
His senses have gone sharp, assaulted by the smells and the too-bright splash of lifeblood, blinding in the sunlight. The rectory floor is creaky and old, half faded with sunshine. He shifts his weight for leverage and is startled by the groan.  
  
Jo goes through the motions of extracting shrapnel detachedly, like she sees this sort of thing all the time. Maybe she does. But all the impromptu trauma experience in the world does not compensate for the surgical skillsets she lacks. The woman dies, bleeding out beneath Kendall’s hands.  
  
Swearing up a storm, Jo falls back against one of the laminate countertops, bending in on herself.  
  
“She was sick,” the robed girl murmurs, but even she doesn’t sound convinced.  
  
Kendall isn’t paying attention. Somewhere in the midst of the melee, he zeroed in on a mason jar resting dusty atop the windowsill. A tiny bouquet of Black-Eyed Susans stands inside, wilting in the hot, stagnant water someone forgot to refill. His eyes trace the intricate, veiny curvature of the yellow petals, entranced until Jo says his name, razorblade sharp. “ _Kendall_.”  
  
Pointedly, Jo looks at his hands, which are still clutching the dead woman’s shoulders. He lets go in a rush, desperate for…for soap. All the  
soap ever created, preferably. And more, if he can find it.  
  
Kendall is vaguely aware that he’s going into shock. He says, “She died.”  
  
Jo says, “They snuck through the Fence. Got shot at for their troubles.” She pauses. “Might’ve died soon anyway.”  
  
He blinks at her.  
  
“Radiation sickness,” Jo explains shortly, gesturing to the unnatural red-yellow of the woman’s skin. “They must have come up from the South.” She pushes up off the countertop and takes hold of Kendall’s wrists, trying to distract him from the dead woman’s unblinking eyes.  
“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. Jennifer’s got this.”  
  
“Sure,” the robed girl mutters resentfully. “I’ve totally got this.”  
  
Jo takes Kendall into the rectory bathroom, where jugs of brownish water stand in a neat row on the tiled floor. She scrubs at his knuckles with a rough bristled sponge, ignoring his attempts to bat her away. This isn’t his first dance with death, or his last. He’s not a child.  
  
Petulant and unhappy, Kendall demands, “Why would they come here? Why would they think it was safe?”  
  
Jo snorts. “Church? Sanctuary?”  
  
He’s quiet, mulling this over and over in his head. What he says next isn’t supposed to be out loud. “I thought you went to a convent in Mantua.”  
  
“I never said it was a convent.” Jo arches an eyebrow at him, setting the sponge on the edge of the sink. The porcelain was white once,  
probably, before age and the sludge water they all use ate away at it.  
  
“Right,” Kendall says, because it was James who made that joke, when Jo told him she was leaving to serve God. He made a bunch of naughty nun jokes that Kendall never found funny, but in retrospect, they’re hilarious. Or maybe that’s the shock.  
  
He misses James, abruptly, wildly. Kendall wishes he’d brought him, only he’s pretty sure there are rules against dragging your boyfriend on an errand to confirm the date of your wedding to someone else.  
  
“Is everyone – are they okay?” Jo asks, too gentle. He must be wearing his best impression of a frightened rabbit. “Logan? Carlos? James?”  
  
“They’re fine,” he mumbles. “They’re all fine.”  
  
“Okay.” Jo prods, “Then – don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see you, but – why did you come?”  
  
“Wedding. I’m supposed to-“ Something else occurs to him. “That girl, Jennifer. She was wearing robes.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Like those – the crazies.” He bops his head and drops into a bow, intoning, “May grace light your way.”  
  
“Crazy is a harsh term,” Jo tells him, the brightness in her dark eyes dimming.  
  
Kendall is afraid. Of a lot of things. Of being found out. Of dead refugees. Of the girl he once loved housing political terrorists. He counters,  
“It’s not. Have you read the pamphlets? Going up the Reproduction Initiative is _insane_.”  
  
Stonily, Jo replies, “I wrote the pamphlets.”  
  
And oh. _Oh_.  
  
“I’m going to need to sit down.”

\---

  
In the back of the rectory, there’s a common room milling with women and men. Jo heads straight to the far-most corner, plopping down amidst about eight hundred and ninety one pillows. She tucks her knees into her chest, curling her back into the harem of multicolored fluff. A cluster of embroidered flower petals peeks from behind her left hip. A tribal pattern of ochre and rust frames her right bicep. She folds her fingers against the blood stained fabric at her knees and asks, “What do you want to know?”  
  
Kendall sits beside her, intensely aware of all the eyes in the room that are now trained on him. There’s an old printing press settled into one alcove, but the people bent over it’s strange mechanisms are obviously eavesdropping. Closer still, Jennifer sits with two similarly clad girls, manipulating paper into neat tri-folds. All three of them are noticeably staring.  
  
He bites the inside of his cheek and tries not to let it get to him.  
  
“For one, how haven’t you gotten caught?”  
  
Jo answers smoothly, “They can’t touch us because we’re technically a religious organization.”  
  
“Yet. They can’t touch us yet,” Jennifer grumbles from the floor. She shoves a piece of partially folded propaganda towards him. “Have a pamphlet. It’s full of obvious.”  
  
Sensibly, Jo rebukes her, “If you don’t explain why something’s wrong, how can you expect a person to know it’s wrong?”  
  
“It should be instinctive,” Jennifer argues. “People should be in control of what happens to their own bodies. This legislation is crap, and those douchebags up top know it. Educating them isn’t going to help.”  
  
“Not everyone was born with the same good sense as you. Education is a weapon, just like this.” Jo reaches out and takes Kendall’s gun from his holster, spinning it over her finger. Our Lady of Guadalupe winks colors against her skin, green and red, blue and gold. Jo says, “Don’t get discouraged. Jennifer likes to yell.”  
  
“You blame me? I have to explain myself to every other idiot who crosses my path. How would you like it?”  
  
“Patience helps enact change. Gandhi said so.”  
  
“I don’t know if you heard, Jo, but Gandhi died like a million years ago.”  
  
Throwing Kendall a fond look, Jo says, “See? Yelling. She thinks it gets the point across.”  
  
“Does it?”  
  
“Sometimes.” Jo inclines her head to the side. “There are a lot of stubborn people out there. Once you scream your agenda in their face or tell them they’re wrong, I’ve noticed they tend to dig their heels in even harder.”  
  
“Does your way work any better?” Kendall pulls the pamphlet from Jennifer’s outstretched fingers, waving it in the air.  
  
“Sometimes,” she repeats, crooking a smile. “Everyone’s different.”  
  
 _Jo_ is different. A few months ago, Kendall was still parading around Verona, pretending his memories of her were cut with diamond clarity, because she is the girl that completely broke his heart and Kendall is good at grudges. But now he can admit that they’ve taken on a foggy hue of time, everything left in snatches and clips: the groan of the boardwalk beneath their shoes as he twirled her in circles, so fast that they were both left breathless. Her hair between his fingers, soft and perfumed, and the sweet way she’d kiss his forehead whenever she said goodbye. The smudged lipstick she’d leave on his skin, the color of crushed cranberries, and the way James never seemed to much like her.  
Kendall supposes that last one makes sense now.  
  
“Look at it this way,” Jo continues, and watching her now, Kendall can’t really remember what demarcated her as his first love, what made her different than every other girl he’d ever been with. She is lovely and fierce to be sure, but Verona crawls with fierce, lovely women. Even so,  
Kendall was crushed when she left without much explanation, without any kind of apology. She was snuggled in his arms one day, and the next she told him it was over, and now there’s…this. “Your whole life, you’ve been told the Earth is flat. You’re in the middle of a conversation, and you mention that. The person you’re talking to starts freaking out and screaming about what an idiot you are, because the Earth is obviously a globe. What do you do?”  
  
Kendall considers it. “I guess, if I couldn’t convince them to stop yelling, I’d just walk away.”  
  
“Exactly. But if that person calmly tells you you’re wrong, and then tries to explain that the earth is round?”  
  
“…I’d at least listen, even if I thought they were wrong.”  
  
“And maybe they convince you, and maybe they don’t, but at least there’s a discourse instead of a monologue that nobody’s listening to.”  
  
“I hate to break this to you, but no one’s listening to this.” He lays the pamphlet against her knee, the big, bold headlines about regaining control of his body and taking charge of his destiny swimming in front of his eyes. He never tried reading one before. “They’re too scared.”  
  
“They shouldn’t be,” Jo says with utter conviction. “This is America, a nation of rabble-rousers and pioneers, prisoners and pilgrims. An entire country of people who decided or were forced to go their own way, and in the end they are all braver and stronger and freer for it. We don’t need Griffin, or Hawk, or the Reproduction Initiate. It’s time to take back control.”  
  
“That sounds great in theory,” Kendall concedes, because who doesn’t like democracy and streets paved with gold? “But do you even  
remember what it’s like on the outside?” How could she not? There are two dead refugees in her kitchen serving as a reminder that might as well be lit in neon. “This isn’t America anymore, it’s large scale fucking chaos. Even if we could take down the Council and the City Board, then what? Who rushes in to fill the void they’ve left? All we’ve got left are tyrants and murderers.”  
  
“No,” Jo corrects, eyes steelier than Kendall has ever seen them. “The _people_ will take their rightful place. It’s time for Verona to govern itself, without the conceit of the rich or their power hungry foot soldiers.”  
  
She is so stern, so ferocious, so unwavering that Kendall wants nothing more than to believe her. He has an inexplicable fondness for this girl, despite how she wrecked him, and besides, the dream she’s selling in a heady one. Kendall could buy into it.  
  
If he’d never been a refugee. If he’d never witnessed an execution or tried to survive a riot. If. If. If. There are way too many ifs. The truth is, dreams are dreams for a reason and all the bravery bled out of Verona before Kendall ever stepped foot in it.  
  
“Jo, people _are_ soulless monsters. You give anyone that much power, they’ll go mad.”  
  
Jo stares at him for what feels like an eternity, unsympathetic and unmoved. When her face finally softens, it is a gradual thing, bravado flaking away until she is his peach-blossom girl, pretty, sweet, and exhausted. “You really believe that, don’t you?”  
  
“I-“  
  
The transition from honeyed to furious takes but a moment. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Kendall Knight. Absolutely ashamed.”  
  
“Uh.” Kendall tries his very best to appear chastened, even though he has fuck-all idea what’s happening. “Uhhh. Help me out here?”  
  
Jo snaps, “You don’t get to write people off like that.”  
  
“I-“  
  
“Do you even know how lucky you are, that you haven’t been facing all of this alone? You’re afraid, and that’s okay, but you don’t get to lose faith in humanity. Not when you’re so damn lucky.”  
  
“I-“  
  
“What about Carlos? Logan? _James_? Are they soulless monsters? Camille? Me?”  
  
“I-“  
  
She gesticulates rapidly about the room, jabbing her fingers at each of the girls by their feet, at herself, at Kendall. “For every bogeyman that lives outside these walls, there is a counterpart. There is grace, and light, and goodness. There are people who are trying to make things better.”  
  
“I-“  
  
“That’s how you lose, when you stop believing, when you lose the will to fight. You, of all people, _can_ rage against everything. You’re going to be the future Mr. Mercedes Griffin. You _need_ to be strong – all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing!”  
  
“Okay, yeesh, can you let me finish a sentence?” Kendall ducks the glare Jo shoots at him, raking a hand through his hair. He waits for her to start in on him again, but she’s waiting, it seems, for his promised words. Only, he’s not sure where to start. Carefully, he asks, “That last thing. It was a quote, right?”  
  
“That doesn’t make it less true,” Jo responds, a tad stiffly. She crosses her arms and frowns at him, and Kendall honestly has not been the recipient of this much frowning since James threw pants in his face. Why does he keep having this effect on people?  
  
“Maybe calling everyone monsters was the wrong thing to say,” he allows.  
  
The quirk of Jo’s eyebrow says _you think?_ , but the rest of her stays silent, leaving Kendall to work through his thoughts.  
  
“What you’re all doing is…really, really courageous. It could even be necessary,” Kendall concedes, although he can’t fight the idea the devil he knows is a lot less dangerous than all the other demons outside Verona. Maybe that’s own fault, though, for buying into the propaganda the CC circulates. They say Verona is a safehaven, Verona is peace, but Verona also hasn’t felt like either of those things since day one.  
  
Jo huffs a sigh. “But?”  
  
“But I can’t afford to be a revolutionary.”  
  
One of the floor girls makes a dismissive sound, commenting, “The rest of us can’t afford not to.”  
  
“Kendall,” Jo says patiently. “You’re poised to be one of the most powerful men in this city. Don’t let that go to waste. Help us.”  
  
“No, I- can we talk somewhere private?”  
  
Jo surveys her minions, obviously convinced there’s nothing she can’t say in front of them. Which, whatever, Kendall doesn’t trust any of these fanatics as far as he can throw them. But he’s willing to trust Jo, because he thought he loved her once, and maybe he still does.  
Differently, perhaps, than he used to, more like a friend than a lover, but it doesn’t make the impulse to tell her everything less strong.  
  
She purses her lips together. “Follow me.”  
  
She leads him over cobblestone, towards a strangely arched wooden door in the back of the church.  
  
“Bring her back in one piece,” Jennifer calls, staring at Kendall like if she tries hard enough she might be able to skewer him with her eyes.  
Kendall’s not convinced she can’t; something pricks hot and hard beneath his collarbone.  
  
Maybe that’s his conscience. If the world was different, defender of the innocent might’ve been a role he’d be good at.  
  
Inside a tiny chapel between the church and the rectory, he and Jo face off. She touches his face, cups his cheek. She says, “I know you want to help. I can see it in your eyes.”  
  
“I’m not that easy to read,” Kendall protests, without drawing away. She has small hands, like Camille’s, like Katie’s, and her affection is sisterly. A few months ago, he might’ve tried to delude himself into thinking it means something more, but now he is simply grateful they’re still friends. Even if Jo isn’t into him anymore, the way she still cares is clear.  
  
That will make this easier.  
  
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut tight and confesses, “It’s James.”  
  
He cannot see Jo’s face, but he can hear her bewilderment. “What’s James?”  
  
“The reason I can’t help you.”  
  
Jo drops her hand, the cold air inside the church leeching the warmth from his skin immediately. “I’m not following. What does James have to do with-“  
  
“We’re together,” Kendall blurts.  
  
Jo’s mouth closes with an audible click, her teeth snapping together. “You’re-“  
  
“For nearly a month now.” Kendall cracks one eye open, peering out at her. In the shadows of the rectory, she doesn’t appear to be particularly shell-shocked, but it is pretty dim. He rushes to say, “You can’t tell anyone.”  
  
“ _Duh_. Kendall, look at me,” she coaxes, touching his arms now, his shoulders, rubbing soothing circles against his skin. He obediently opens his other eye, meeting her pretty gaze head on. She does not flinch away from him, or call him names, or run to report him to the nearest authority, so he figures he hasn’t made a completely horrific mistake in telling her. Probably. “How did this happen? You and Mercedes are supposed to be getting married.”  
  
Miserably, Kendall says, “Thanks for reminding me.”  
  
Jo squeezes his shoulders, reminding him that she’s waiting for an explanation, here.  
  
“James, he’s – well, he’s _James_ , and he came to me, and it escalated so fast that I couldn’t, I don’t –“ Kendall takes a steadying breath, trying to find the thread of his thoughts. “I can’t lose him, Jo. If I work with you, if I spy for you, if I fight for you, someone might find out. That puts James at risk, and he’s…everything, Jo, and why do you not look very surprised by any of this?”  
  
Jo snickers, her delight bubbling up and out until it is a full blown laugh.  
  
“It’s about time he made a move. Oh, don’t look at me like that! He stares at you like you hung the sun in the sky.” Kendall makes sad, pitiful eyes at her, completely confused. She forges on, “I thought he’d be stuck forever denying it in a bevy of increasingly inadvisable one night stands.”  
  
He opens his mouth, but his words have fled the building. Possibly the town. Maybe even the Earth.  
  
Jo asks, “So how is it? Everything you hoped it would be?”  
  
“Everything I hoped-“ Kendall gawks, “I didn’t hope for anything. I had no idea this was going to happen, Jo!”  
  
“Really?” Jo tilts her head just enough that the light streaming through one of the stained glass window catches her eyes, dancing red and green across their surface. “Oh.”  
  
Really, oh, doesn’t exactly encompass all the longing and terror Kendall has been experiencing since all of this started, so he doesn’t bother hiding his outrage. “You knew? You _knew_?!”  
  
He sounds all wrong, voice worn-out and underdone and plaintive. It’s enough that Jo stops chuckling to herself and considers him with some small amount of solemnity. “Relax. It’s not as obvious as I’m making it out to be, but sure. I had my suspicions.”  
  
“Explain. Now.” Kendall stomps his foot, but Jo is not impressed in the least with the order. She refuses to say anything until he tacks on a timid, squeaking, “Please?”  
  
“You guys are all so close. Closer than any friends I’ve ever met, which is nice. I said it before, Kendall; you’re lucky. But you and James, you guys are something else. You shouldn’t work, and you do. I don’t get it.”  
  
Kendall is not pouting. Just because his lower lip is jutting out quite a bit does not mean he’s got a pout going on.  
  
She says, “You’re oil and water. You like some of the same things, sure, but he wants parties and girls and everyone in town to know his name, while you? You go along with all of it, because of James, but I dated you for a long time, Kendall. You’re a white knight. You want a challenge and a soul mate and a white picket fence. Together, you guys shouldn’t work, you shouldn’t click. There should be sparks, explosions-“  
  
“Oh, there are definitely sparks,” Kendall mutters under his breath, and Jo allows herself a tiny grin.  
  
She says, “Savor it. People don’t get many chances to be cherished.”  
  
Regret cracks the mortar that holds him together, tears him down brick by brick. “You thought about this the entire time we were dating, didn’t you?”  
  
“It wasn’t the reason I broke up with you, if that’s what you’re asking. I cared about you, Kendall, a lot. But this is important; not just for me. For everyone. For the future. If we give up control now, we’ll never get it back.”  
  
“You’re right. I’m sorry I can’t help.”  
  
“You can.”  
  
“I’m sorry I won’t help, then,” Kendall corrects, trying to put everything he can into it. Trying to tell her his worst fear without actually saying it out loud; how he worries he and James are bullets with each other’s names written across the casing. “I can’t put any of the guys in the way of danger. I need to protect them.”  
  
“They’d be safer if they were free.” Jo pins him with her eyes, but she isn’t angry. Merely exhausted. It must be hard, being a rebel.  
  
“Wars have casualties. Always. But I wish I didn’t have to leave you by yourself in this.”  
  
Jo cocks a wry grin. She says, “Stars tell us we’re not alone. My dad used to tell me that all the time when I was little.”  
  
It’s a weird change of subject. Kendall makes a noncommittal sound, but Jo leans forward and touches his hand, the specter of a dead girl’s blood invisible around his knuckles, but still so painfully there.  
  
“He was right. Even when you can’t see the stars, we’re not, you know. Alone. Not any of us, even if it feels like it.” Almost unnecessarily, she adds, “I’ll always be here if you need me.”  
  
Kendall needs a lot of things, but he hadn’t understood how much he needed this; one person, other than James, who knows what he is and doesn’t care. It makes the future feel less bleak, less disheartening. Without even realizing he’s doing it, Kendall squeezes Jo’s hand and hopes and hopes and _hopes_.


	9. You Were A Paper Back Boy (With A Slate So Clean)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bubbles sparkle in the sunlight, golden, shimmering things that dance around the tips of Camille’s fingertips. She twirls her glass with easy grace, holding it up in a salute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Errrrrrm. Is an update. I maybe killed someone. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Don't kill me?

Bubbles sparkle in the sunlight, golden, shimmering things that dance around the tips of Camille’s fingertips. She twirls her glass with easy grace, holding it up in a salute.  
  
“What is it they say in the language of your people? Let’s get crunk, bitches?”  
  
Camille grins wide, her mouth soft and pink and laughing. She’s too damn proud of herself, tipsy and off-key in the middle of the afternoon.  
  
Kendall tells her, “You’re flagged. I am flagging you down.”  
  
“I’d like to see you try.”  
  
“It’s my fiancée’s stolen alcohol; I can do whatever I want with it.” Lazily, he makes a grab for the bottle, but Camille’s quicker than he is. She always has been. Kendall pouts, “My champagne, my rules.”  
  
It’s completely ineffective.  
  
“Where do they even get this stuff? Hop a plane over to France?” Camille quits spinning her glass and starts turning the bottle, searching out an identifying mark and coming up empty.  
  
“I think the valleys north of Mantua are still operational. Kind of.” Kendall sips at his own drink, gone bitter with age. “But I grabbed this from Griffin’s cellar. I think it’s just really, really old. And sour.”  
  
Camille smirks. “It’s still better than L’Amour’s ‘shine. Pretty sure Lucy’s started mixing in gasoline.”  
  
“Nah, that’s just the taste of her disdain.”  
  
Kendall turns on his stomach, the sun warm car hot through his thin t-shirt. The sky is bright and blue and endless in every direction, and in Camille’s presence, he feels calm, happy.  
  
Safe.  
  
“Every time she shoots James down, my heart grows three sizes. She’s my spirit animal.” Camille peers up through thick, dark lashes, her caramel eyes reflecting the sky and the sea. “He knows he has no chance, right? James?”  
  
Aiming for nonchalant and landing somewhere near awkward, Kendall replies, “I don’t think he cares either way. It’s all about the thrill of the hunt.”  
  
Camille snorts. “For Lucy, it’ll be about the thrill of stabbing him in the eye socket, one of these days. Although…James has been different lately. You all have.”  
  
Kendall does not flinch away. He’s scared of Camille finding out, but he’s not scared of Camille. Not her. Never her. “I know. We all grow remarkably more handsome by the day.”  
  
Dramatically, Camille presses her hand to her chest and says, “It’s already happening. The narcissism of the rich is seeping into your pores.”  
  
“And here I promised I’d never lose myself.” Kendall flails a bit, sloshing his champagne. “Maybe I should cancel the wedding.”  
  
The last part comes out more seriously than he intended.  
  
It must, because Camille hurries to say, “Don’t do that. Mercedes is nice. Wrong, a lot of the time, about a lot of things. But nice.”  
  
“Hey, you’re supposed to be _my_ friend. Mine.”  
  
“I am. Jerk.” She punctuates the insult with a slap of her hand on the back of Kendall’s thigh. It stings, but not enough for him to do much more than glare resentfully in retaliation. “But this wedding’s going to be good for you. For all of you guys. It’d be nice to see you worry less.”  
  
“I knew you cared,” Kendall retorts. The soft rhythm of the waves fills the momentary silence, everything sun-soaked and perfect.  
  
“Of course I do.” Camille beams, the soft curls of her hair spun red and brown and gold. “How many times have I saved your ass, Knight?”  
  
“One, that I recall.”  
  
“What about that time with the-“  
  
“I had that handled.”  
  
“Okay, and the time with the-“  
  
“It wasn’t that bad.”  
  
“And the thing in the-“  
  
“Okay, maybe you helped out with that one.”  
  
“Baby, you’re growing up,” Camille coos, patting his cheek. “I’m proud.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. How goes it guarding the gates of hell?” He asks lightly, because yeah, Camille has saved his ass a lot more times than one, two, or three. “Are you growing horns yet?”  
  
He makes to check the top of her head, but she stops him with a glare, warning, “I could make it so no one ever finds your body.”  
  
Kendall has no doubt that she could.  
  
Camille leans back, the sunlight white-washing her pale, pale throat. She never tans, but neither does he; California seeps beneath both of their skins, flushing through their veins until they are red, red, red.  
  
But that’s okay. It’s nice to burn.  
  
Or it will be until later tonight, when Kendall whines and moans and forces Logan to administer a heavy coat of aloe vera.  
  
Camille says, more seriously now, “I’m tired of working the wall. It’s like this war never ends.”  
  
“War?”  
  
“War can be many things.” Her eyelashes are long and dark, and they feather across her cheeks as she sighs. “I wish I’d never had to know any of them.”  
  
“So quit,” he offers, knowing even as he says it that it’s an impossible prospect.  
  
Camille smiles, the tug of her lips contagious, but self-loathing. “As if.”  
  
He doesn’t know what to say to that. But helplessness and futility are not on the agenda today, no way, no sir. He raises his glass in the air, watching the champagne glitter and fizz.  
  
“Yeah. Hey, did I tell you I ran into Jo?”  
  
“Jo told me you ran into Jo,” Camille replies.  
  
“You still talk to Jo? I didn’t know that. Traitor.”  
  
“She was my bud way before you, Knight.”  
  
“Then you know what she’s up to? The whole,” he waves his hand in the air, vaguely, “Crazy.”  
  
Camille frowns, “I try not to think about it.”  
  
“But you know. You knew. When we saw her cronie at the fair? Why didn’t you say anything?”  
  
“Down, boy. I honestly didn’t know if you’d want me to, the way you’d been carrying all that baggage she left you with.”  
  
He can’t deny that logic. “What do you think of it?”  
  
“Think? I still don’t think grace is lighting anyone’s way, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
Kendall stifles a laugh. Because, “I’m scared for her.”  
  
“I am too. But you know Jo. There’s no talking her down once she’s convinced she’s right. Trust me. I tried.”  
  
As casually as he can muster, he asks, “Do you think she’s right?”  
  
“About…what, the body politics and legislation? Sure. Of course she’s right.” Camille laughs, “But as a venture, it’s destined to fail. Verona isn’t what Jo thinks it is. The people here aren’t what she thinks they are. I see you all come and go, through the damn wall. Like I said before, we’re living in a warzone. Everyone is too tired from that for a real revolution.”  
  
Camille’s eyes are as hard and shiny as Tiger’s Eye, striped through with rust and gold.  
  
Subject change. Kendall thinks it is definitely time for one. “So. What I asked to meet you for-“  
  
“It wasn’t just to share the hooch? I feel so betrayed.”  
  
Kendall laughs, because it was that, a bit. Splitting his time between James and Mercedes hasn’t left much time for the two of them to hang, and he misses her. “I need your help.”  
  
“You’ve got it.”  
  
He explains the finer details of his scheme, emphasizing the stealth bit, because Camille does sneaky like a pro. That’s a big part of what built their friendship; she’s exactly Kendall’s type. Fucked in the head and cute to boot.  
  
Although he’d never tell her that last part. Her guns are sleek and black, peeking from a hand-stitched leather holster that seats them each comfortably under her arms. The badass and scary is at odds with her frilly red sundress, but so is the knife strapped to her thigh. She is extremes, dangerous and girly, and Kendall thinks, the best friend he has. He can’t imagine what Verona would be like if he’d never met her.  
  
Probably slightly less sassy. “Why are your plans always so complicated?”  
  
“It’s not – how is that complicated?”  
  
“We can cut, like, five steps from it.” Camille pauses, because she’s also much too perceptive. “You want to do all this for – James. Not  
Mercedes?”  
  
Kendall shrugs, not sure what to say. “He’s my best friend, and he’s been through a lot.”  
  
“We all have.” Camille takes one last sip of champagne, draining the glass. “I think it’s sweet that you guys are so close.”  
  
He waits, because it’s clear that she has more to say.  
  
“It makes people talk, you know.”  
  
“Talk how?”  
  
“In a way that you don’t always want people talking.” She re-crosses her legs, the base of the knife winking metal between leather and the hilt.  
“Some people, they’re jealous they can’t have what you have.”  
  
“A sparkling personality?”  
  
Camille snorts. “Guys like Dak? Yeah. They don’t understand it. They hate it.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is, Dak’s the one who’s been talking.”  
  
“Dak is always talking. What worries me is the people who are listening.”  
  
That’s what worries Kendall, too. He thinks about Griffin, and everything he’s given him so far. He thinks about everything Griffin could just as easily take away.  
  
Maybe doing this, planning something so extravagant for James, is a bad idea. He bites his lip, worrying. Kendall feels like he doesn’t know what it is not to worry anymore.  
  
Camille catches on. She always does. “Dak’s an insect. He’s the one who fucked up his relationship with Mercedes, but he can’t help blaming it on you, because then he’d have to wear his grownup pants.”  
  
“I didn’t know he’d been running his mouth about it.”  
  
“He’s not the only one. Kendall, you’re nobody-“  
  
“Gee. Thanks.” Kendall frowns and refills his own glass of champagne, because that one kind of stings, coming from her.  
  
“Please, you know that’s not what I mean,” she huffs. “You came out of nowhere and swept Mercedes off of her feet, and guys like Jett and Dak and so many others worked and plotted and connived and all of that fell through for them. So now you’re on top, and they want to knock you down a peg or two.”  
  
“Okay. But…It’s not what they’re saying about Mercedes and I that’s worrying you, though, is it?” It can’t be, Kendall thinks, because there’s nothing really wrong with being the underdog. Camille wouldn’t have brought it up if there wasn’t something wrong.  
  
“No,” she admits. She looks decidedly uncomfortable. “You guys haven’t been coming to L’Amour as much. You and James, I mean.”  
  
“We’re there nearly every night,” Kendall protests, although now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t been to the bar in a week.  
  
Camille inclines her head like, _maybe so_. But, “James hasn’t picked up a girl in months.”  
  
Kendall has nothing to say to that.  
  
She continues, “Maybe he’s just tired, or maybe he’s got something going on the side, but the thing is, whenever people see him, the two of you are attached at the hip.”  
  
“What are you asking me, Camille?”  
  
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you that this thing with James…Kendall. People are noticing how much time you spend together.”  
  
“I spend just as much time with Logan and Carlos.”  
  
“You don’t. But they’re not exactly paragons of manliness. Carlos spends half his time in a skirt, for Chris’sake. I’m just saying that…that you’re lucky Mercedes is in your life, is all.”  
  
He clutches the stem of his champagne glass so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t crack. “Because if she wasn’t…?”  
  
“Then someone might do more than ask questions,” she says, but she’s quick to cover. “Look, maybe Dak’s getting in my head. I know you and James have always been crazy close. I remember the stories you told me, about what you _all_ went through on the other side.”  
  
Quietly, Kendall asks, “What kind of rumors is he spreading? Is he saying James and I are-”  
  
“Nothing like that. It’s more…insinuated. He says that Mercedes is unhappy with the engagement. That you’re not _performing_. That maybe there’s a reason for that.”  
  
Kendall swallows against a combination of bile and guilt, because what Dak’s saying is all _true_.  
  
“It’s like you said, he runs his mouth, particularly when he’s drunk, which is all the time lately.”  
  
“Why lately?”  
  
Camille sighs. “Mercedes, and…there have been a few incidents at the Wall. We’ve had to put down more refs than I can count, lately.”  
  
She looks unhappy about it. Probably because unlike Dak Zevon, she has a soul. Kendall touches her shoulder and murmurs, “It’s bad out there, hunh?”  
  
“It’s bad in here. Forget about it. I shouldn’t have said anything. If Dak causes any more scenes, I’ll take care of it.” He feels like she’s even more worried than she’s letting on, but if there was serious trouble, Camille would say something, right?  
  
She would say something. He’s sure of it.  
  
Kendall gulps down the rest of his champagne, squeezing his eyes shut. He and James have to be more careful, James in particular. He thinks about the talk they’ll need to have, and dreads it.  
  
He must look traumatized, because out of nowhere, Camille announces casually, “I had a crush on you one time,” pouring herself another glass of champagne. The bottle’s contents are dangerously low.  
  
“Did you?”  
  
She laughs. “No. Logan was pretty much it for me.”  
  
“I’m sorry he’s…who he is.”  
  
“If he was anyone else, I never would have fallen for him,” she replies ruefully. “I don’t love him despite his flaws. I love him because of them.”  
  
Kendall starts. “You still love him? I thought you guys were-“  
  
“Caput.” She claps her hands together, the noise harsh and echoing in the empty street. “Over. Totally. That doesn’t mean I ever stopped.  
Just. Some things are more important than love.”  
  
“That sounds miserable.” It’s as honest as Kendall knows how to be. “When I was a kid, I thought love and loyalty were the only things that matter.”  
  
“Yeah, well. No one says, when I’m older I’m going to be exactly the same, only a little smarter and a little sadder.” Camille smiles a smile that isn’t a smile. “We change. Although I guess the smarter and sadder parts still apply.”  
  
“Camille-“  
  
“I’ll help you out. With the James thing. Give me until the end of today, and it’ll be ready first thing in the morning.”  
  
“You’re the best.”  
  
She smiles, and this time it is real, a brilliant, cunning thing that outshines everything around them, from the sun to the rusted metal of the car they’re seated on. “You know it.”  
  
It’s the last thing he will ever hear her say.

 

\---

  
This is how an idea catches fire.  
  
It starts out as nothing more than the smallest of embers, smoldering in the back of Kendall’s mind. And then, every time he acknowledges its existence, it grows bigger, a fanned flame.  
  
Soon enough, it becomes a raging blaze, something impossible to deny.  
  
This is how an idea catches fire, and this is how Kendall has fallen in love with James.  
  
He doesn’t know that, completely, not really. Not until he makes his way into their busted up apartment later that same afternoon and hears his best friend singing languidly above his head. Stretched across the sunwarm tiles of the rooftop, James is all arms and legs, a starfish boy.  
  
He brightens the second he hears the scrape of Kendall’s shoes against brick. The flash of his teeth is automatic, like he can’t even help it, and Kendall’s heart skips a beat.  
  
To cover, he asks, “Laaaazy. Is this all you’ve been doing all day?”  
  
James shrugs, golden skin moving over slick muscle. Every inch of him is exactly what he always wanted to be as a kid; a messed up mystery, and Kendall doesn’t know how to walk away. So he doesn’t. He stays, settling himself next to James’s prone body.  
  
James asks, “How was work?”  
  
“Gustavo nearly burst a vein yelling at our new artist, so that was a fun thing that happened.”  
  
“How was Camille?”  
  
“Feisty as ever.”  
  
“Did she like the champagne that you wouldn’t let _me_ drink?” James pouts, rolling to face Kendall. Their noses are nearly touching, but there’s no urgency to kiss him. He knows it will happen at some point, and he knows it will be great, but for now, he gets to drink in the way the sun colors James’s eyes gold-gray-brown, all leonine and lovely.  
  
“I told you, I wanted to ask her for a favor.”  
  
“You never liquor me up for favors.”  
  
“You’re easy.”  
  
James cocks his head a bit and laughs. “True. What did you talk about?”  
  
“None of your beeswax.”  
  
“Fine. See if I care.” He lolls his head to the side, a bit miffed but still smiling. His hair is ruffled and sticking in odd directions, so un-James-like, but even sweeter for it. He looks like maybe he’d taken a nap, or had just spent the entire afternoon analyzing the shape and size of the clouds.  
  
Kendall hates himself for what he’s about to say. “There are…uh…some things that I think you need to start caring about.”  
  
“Such as?”  
  
“Camille mentioned…erm. People are noticing that, uh…”  
  
“That I’m rakishly handsome?”  
  
Kendall fists his hand in the material of his shirt, red-blue and covered in sacred heart iconography. The shirt James gave him. He wears it all the time, now.  
  
“That you aren’t fucking anyone.”  
  
James blinks, slowly. “I’m fucking you.”  
  
“That’s what I’d like people _not_ to notice, thanks.” Kendall is vaguely aware that his voice is getting pitchy and a little scared. His throat feels scratchy, slick with sweat on the inside, and he can feel the frayed threads of thick rope slipping and sliding against his skin, and oh god, for a fantastically, horrifyingly clear moment he thinks he can see James’s face, bloated and dead, dead, _dead_ -  
  
“ _Hey_!” James shakes him, hard. He’s on his knees, blocking out the sun, and Kendall wonders when he moved. “You’re freaking out, man.”  
  
“You aren’t.”  
  
“What do you want me to say? That sucks?” He purses his lips. “Life sucks, sometimes. We’ll deal with it.”  
  
“I know we will,” Kendall agrees. “Tonight, at L’Amour, you’re going to pick up a girl, bring her back here, and-“  
  
“No.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Enunciating, James says, “N. O. No.”  
  
“James,” Kendall tries, but before he can finish, James strips his blue t-shirt over his head, his movements deliberate. His eyes glow topaz with the sun at his back, lines of gold illuminating the barest traces of hair on his arms, his thighs, and the flat span of his stomach. Kendall’s mouth goes desert-dry.  
  
“The only person I’m taking home is going to be you.”  
  
Kendall opens his mouth.  
  
“The only person I’m making love to is going to be _you_.” James begins unbuckling his pants, his eyes never leaving Kendall’s face, and how is he supposed to argue against this?  
  
“James,” he tries again.  
  
James pushes his mouth up against Kendall’s cutting off the protests on his lips. And Kendall kisses him back, drowning all the worry and dread that’s towering in his bones, brought on by Jo and Camille and this fucking place. There’s only so much a person can worry before they lose themselves completely, and if he’s going to do that, he wants to do it in James, in the hot pant of his breath and the movement of his mouth over Kendall’s and the way that his hands tug fervently at the stupid jeans that form a barrier between them.  
  
He begs, “Can I?” And Kendall lets him, because oh hell, what else is he supposed to do?  
  
He lets himself be stretched open there, in the naked daylight, where anyone who thinks to look can see, but who on earth would look on top of a squatter’s roof? No one, Kendall hopes, Kendall thinks, but Kendall’s not really thinking at all, because he’s biting down against cries, against the pain and the ecstasy of James’s fingers inside of him. And then it’s not fingers and makeshift lube moving against him, but something bigger, more pressure, and James’s stomach is flat against Kendall’s spine, sweat forming puddles between them.

Their position on the roof is precarious, all shifting shingles and the whole of Verona laid out before, them; or it would be, if their view wasn’t blocked by the run down office building. But as James’s boots and Kendall’s knees slip against the tar and tile, the blocked beauty of that view is also their safety, looming empty windows passing no judgement at all.  
  
James bites kisses into Kendall’s shoulderblades, kisses bitemarks into his neck. He’s rough and gentle all at once, his big hands imprinting the skin of Kendall’s skinny hips while these sparks shudder through their bodies.  
  
“Kendall,” James pants, “It’s you. I don’t want to do this with anyone else but you.”  
  
Kendall groans and keens and can’t seem to find the words that leave on the breaths James is punching out of him.  
  
James buries himself so deeply in Kendall that they could be one person and these words tumble out of his mouth, these words that end the world, and remake it into something more, “Fuck, love you. Love you. Not anyone else. Just you.”  
  
Kendall’s entire body stills, and James pleads, “Don’t make me take it back. Love you so much. Don’t want to take it back.”  
  
He moves to emphasize it, moves and moves, and Kendall is so close, and this is all too much, too good, too fast.  
  
“ _Don’t_ ,” he gets out.  
  
But James misinterprets it, and he stops the relentless pace of his hips. He’s completely silent, barely even breathing, although Kendall can feel the rise and fall of his chest against his spine. So Kendall reaches back, fumbling for James’s hand, and when he finds it, he squeezes it tight.  
  
“Don’t take it back.”  
  
For a second, Kendall thinks he’s said the wrong thing. James is pulling away, a long slow withdraw. Then James’s hips slam forward, and everything explodes into stars.

 

\---

  
He doesn’t know that at the same time as James is fucking him sweet and hard on the roof, every soft push of their hips jolting all the way down to his toes, Dak Zevon’s at L’Amour, badmouthing Mercedes and Kendall to anyone who will listen.  
  
He doesn’t know that when he’s biting hard against James’s knuckles to choke off his own groans, Lucy is cutting off the ‘shine in a desperate attempt to get ahead of his wasted rage.  
  
The mason jars lining the bar and the big, rusted mirror reflect back all the ugly inside of Dak, too much to be contained as even the people deep in a billiards game stop to watch. So, Kendall doesn’t know that Camille steps in, ordering, “Straighten up soldier. You’re on duty in an hour,” but he wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s who she is.  
  
Because the thing is that Kendall doesn’t need a hero, but it’s never stopped Camille from being one. From being his knight in shining armor, since the very first day she saw him at the fence-line, starving. Dying.  
  
She is the bravest, most noble person he knows.  
  
In her frilly red dress, Kendall does not know that Camille is facing down Dak, stupid Dak with his black uniform and his shiny Hawk badges.  
He calls her a weakling, he calls her Kendall Knight’s _faghag_ , and she loses her temper. She taunts him back.  
  
Camille has never met a witty retort she didn’t like, and she wields them like knives. Soon enough she’s got Dak swearing with rage while  
Kendall is sweating, prone and ecstatic under the weight of James’s body. Dak tells her he’ll kill her for the indignity of it all.  
  
And Camille, being Camille, asks if he wants to put his money where his mouth is. She is tiny and fierce, too dangerous to mess with, but her guns keep resting in her hand-stitched holsters, because the bar is filled with civilians, and a hand to hand fight is clearly what she has in mind.  
  
She’s fair. That’s one of the things people have always said about Camille; that she’s fair, and she’s kind. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t see it coming.  
  
James’s come is flooding inside of Kendall when Dak’s bullet pierces Camille’s chest, blood blossoming out, blending in with the fabric until it’s impossible to tell where the dress starts and the wound begins.  
  
If there’s a speech on her lips about Verona and hell, a pox on anyone’s house, or maybe just one final goodbye, nobody hears it. Camille dies, instantly, is how everyone tells it.  
  
Camille dies, and Dak gets one more drink at the bar before he flounces off to work the Wall, and all of this happens while Kendall lies there, in James’s arms.  
  
Not knowing.  
  
James smiles bright and tender, murmuring, “I love you.”  
  
For the first time, Kendall says it back, low and raw, like a secret he’s held inside himself for much too long.  
  
They hear the sound of footsteps below them, Logan or Carlos, home early. Handing Kendall back his shirt, hand fisted in the middle of an orange-blue flower, he says, “This is paradise. Right here. Right now. Remember that.”  
  
The world is beautiful, he’d told Kendall once.  
  
James is beautiful, Kendall thinks.  
  
There’s so much neither of them know, so much they don’t understand, but this, right here, is the last perfect moment they’ll ever have.  
  
This is paradise.

 

\---


	10. The Movement And The Spin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh look. It’s Roberts’ girlfriend,” Dak says without any sting. He climbs to his feet with the creaky, slow movements of an old man. “Come to avenge her, I suppose?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters left after this! I might actually finish it, what?

“Honeys, I’m home,” Carlos announces from the door.  
  
The three of them nearly fall out of their seats, his presence too abrupt, his voice more gravel than sound.  
  
James yelps, “You’re back early,” trying to cover the lightning flash of fear that caught them all off guard. He’s splayed out on the ratty couch, picking the chords of their shared guitar. His easy confidence with music is enthralling, drawing Kendall’s attention away from everything else he’s tried to do tonight, right up until now.  
  
“Yep.” Carlos staggers in the door, blue wig hanging lopsidedly off his head, chest bare and glittering in the low flicker of candlelight.  
He’s wearing a smile that isn’t a smile, the uptick of his lips twisted with pain.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Logan asks immediately, his doctor-instincts kicking into overdrive. He abandons the stack of papers he’s been diligently working on by candlelight, several sheets drifting lazily to the floor in the wake of Logan’s rush to reach Carlos. “Are you  
hurt?”  
  
“Only a little,” Carlos replies, easing himself onto the couch. He’s got his tight leather skirt from the cabaret squeezing all his curves, hindering his every movement, and Kendall can’t once remember Carlos ever wearing the stupid thing home. He strains over James’s lap, trying to see, needing to figure out why Carlos is curling in on himself like that, like maybe it hurts to breathe. “Maybe a lot.”  
  
Logan jabs his fingers into Carlos’s side, a tactile examination that is received with grunts and a handful of un-Carlos-like expletives.  
He twists, and Kendall can see, now.  
  
He’s witness to every gruesome detail.  
  
Carlos clutches his side, but the garish blue-brown of bruises is spreading beneath his fingers, growing larger and darker by the second. Or maybe that’s Kendall’s vision, growing hazy at the edges.  
  
“What. Happened?” He growls.  
  
“I wouldn’t go outside right now. In case you guys were thinking about it.”  
  
“That’s not an answer.”  
  
“I was dancing. Then I wasn’t dancing. Kendall-“ Carlos’s fake smile drops, his dark eyes leaden with sadness. “You haven’t heard yet.”  
  
Cryptic isn’t usually Carlos’s gig.  
  
“Heard what?” He asks, heart sinking to his stomach.  
  
Logan’s fingers are prodding carefully against Carlos’s ribs, double checking for breaks. A furrow is so deeply etched between his eyebrows that Kendall distantly wonders if it will be permanent. He doesn’t concentrate too hard on that, though; only on the breaths leaving his mouth soft but sharp, panic nearly overwhelming him. James’s hand lands steady around his shoulders, and even that doesn’t help, the edge of rage and fear barely dimmed.  
  
“Heard what?” He repeats more harshly.  
  
“Kendall.” Carlos gives him a look that is parts mournful and ironic, like this is news he’s always expected to deliver. “There are riots on the streets. They carried into the club, and I got swept up into it. That’s how I heard. That’s how this happened. Logan-“  
  
And that’s when Kendall knows that what he has to say is about Camille. There is no one in the entire world that Logan cares about,  
other than the three of them, in this room.  
  
He grits his teeth and asks, “Is she hurt?”  
  
Logan takes a minute longer to catch on, but when he does, his eyes grow dark and weary. “Camille? Does she need a doctor?”  
  
“No,” Carlos says, and that’s all the explanation they need. It does not stop him from telling the story in full detail. At some point Logan returns to his paper work, mechanically, his pen scratching over paper and wood.  
  
When Carlos finishes the story, all he says is, “I told you staying in this town was a bad idea.”  
  
He is utterly calm, completely serene, dry-eyed and unexceptional, except for that furrow between his eyebrows.  
  
“You think everything’s a bad idea,” Carlos replies with a grunt.  
  
James nods. “You really do.”  
  
James looks close to tears, but he has never had a problem getting in touch with how he feels. Kendall, though. Kendall is different.  
  
Kendall is numb.  
  
He thinks of Camille in her sundress, cross-legged on the top of a rusted out Volkswagen that afternoon, her hair dancing in the wind, her eyes and her champagne glass sparkling. He hears her laugh in his memory, and then he pushes all that sentimentality away.  
  
He says, “I’m going to kill Dak.”  
  
There is not a single person in the room who doesn’t believe him.

 

\---

  
“Did you hear about Camille Roberts?” People murmur in the street.  
  
They mythologize her, this soldier-girl, make her into a traitor and a hero and everything in between.  
  
“She was in love with that boy, the one who killed her-“  
  
“-turned down his proposal.”  
  
“-pro-Council propaganda, deserved to die-“  
  
They turn her into something she’s not.  
  
She wasn’t.  
  
Kendall can’t wrap his head around which tense he’s supposed to use, can’t get past the part where Camille stopped. Has stopped.  
Full stop.  
  
“She was protecting a boy-“  
  
“She was standing up for what’s right-“  
  
“-infighting in Hawk’s army-“  
  
He hears all these things on his way to L’Amour, the comforting weight of his gun under his arm, the dull beat of James’s sword hitting his stupid leather pants a drumbeat as he and Carlos and Logan trail in his footsteps.  
  
The riots have died down, a temporary rebellion, quelled by Hawk’s men, and Griffin’s people combined. Still, here and there, the sound of breaking glass pierces the night, and Carlos, for his part, winces like the perpetrators will come right for him.  
  
He’s still wearing a skirt, Logan’s arms wrapped under his armpits like a human crutch. It’s too dangerous for him to be outside right now, but Kendall can’t bring himself to care. He’s got one goal, and one goal only; Dak.  
  
“Kendall, stop,” James begs, his legs longer than the other guys’, his grip firm at Kendall’s elbow.  
  
“Let me go,” Kendall tries to tug free, but instead James grabs for his hands, steadying them.  
  
“No, stop! You don’t do this.” James forces him to meet his gaze. “You’re not a killer.”  
  
Kendall leans into his touch, just for a second, and then he says, “You don’t know what I am,” and pulls free. He sights the faded red wall of L’Amour in the distance, the ocean a dull sparkle behind it in the pale moonlight.  
  
He outpaces James and his friends by blocks, ignoring their calling after him. At the weapons-check, he ignores the expectant man at his plywood desk, marching straight past him until Lucy yells, “Oh _hell_ no.”  
  
Kendall nods her way, “I need to talk to you.”  
  
He can feel the portly, sweaty man who runs the desk looming behind him, ready to break his neck if even twitches his wrist.  
  
Lucy glares, her dark eyes flashing lightning. “I’m not your confessional. I owe you nothing.”  
  
“You owe me this,” Kendall replies, even if she doesn’t. All the overlarge tips and fights he helped her shove out the doors don’t  
actually mean she owes him anything. Breathing heavily, he thinks of all the times James sat at the bar counter, chatting Lucy up with the overzealous desperation of a puppy. She’s not the kind of person who caves just because someone asks nicely, and this, how he barged into the bar, has definitely made her cross. She bites out, “Give up the gun, Knight.”  
  
“And then we’ll talk,” he says, stubbornly.  
  
Lucy frowns.  
  
“For Camille,” he prods.  
  
Ducking her head, Lucy’s dark hair obscures her face from view. She grunts, “Fine.”  
  
Obediently, Kendall surrenders his gun to the giant of a man, who returns to his desk and his gross magazines with a hissed warning to watch himself and a nasty look for emphasis.  
  
James, Logan, and Carlos topple into the bar seconds later, but by then Kendall’s already seated across from Lucy. Their voices are hushed as they bicker back and forth. He confirms Carlos’s story, wishing it wasn’t true even as she allows that it is.  
  
Camille is really gone. Hawk’s men collected her body nearly an hour before.  
  
Kendall had figured as much. He’d seen her guns, her knives in their holsters, abandoned at the bottom of the desk man’s open drawer. Still, he takes the information like a punch, rolling with the pain until he’s back to feeling nothing but a storm of anger.  
  
He sees his friends lurking on the edges of his vision, but they don’t interrupt, and he doesn’t acknowledge them. When Lucy finishes her quiet, impassioned explanation, Kendall prompts, “And where did Dak go afterwards?”  
  
“Back to the Wall? Where do all of Hawk’s people run away to lick their wounds?” Lucy doesn’t sound all that impressed with any of the city’s business. She crosses her arms over the bar and says, “Watch it. I know that look. It screams bad decisions.”  
  
“What’s it to you?”  
  
“Nothing,” Lucy retorts. “But you’re a nice guy. Your friends are nice guys. Get the hell out of the city, Knight. Before you do something dumb.”  
  
“Something dumb is his middle name,” James says, finally stepping in. He wraps his arms around Kendall’s shoulders, squeezing.  
  
He thinks of what Lucy just told him, what Dak called Camille – his faghag. There was a public execution of three men last week. Kendall had been too busy at the studio to go and watch the mandatory event, but. He’d heard about it. He’d heard what people called those men after.  
  
And he sees the way Lucy watches James. Kendall shoves him back so hard he stumbles into Logan. When he spins on his bar stool, he sees the hurt in James’s eyes, but he doesn’t apologize. He says, “I’m going to the Wall.”  
  
“Knight,” Lucy warns.  
  
“Kendall,” James tries, Carlos and Logan echoing him.  
  
He ignores them all. The only thing he can think of, every time he closes his eyes, is Camille; her guns and her sundress, and the pale white of her throat the last time he saw her laugh.

 

\---

He doesn’t go to the Wall. Not immediately, because Carlos, James, and Logan guide him home with all the mindfulness of babysitters. James stays up with him on the couch long after the other two have fallen asleep, stroking his fingers through Kendall’s hair and muttering soothing, sweet things into his scalp.  
  
They don’t worry about Logan or Carlos catching them at it, because Logan himself gave into sobs shortly before he fell asleep, burying his sorrow in the crook of Carlos’s armpit. They’re tangled together now, snoring sweetly, but Logan still wears his furrowed expression like a scar.  
  
Kendall thinks of what Camille said about loving him. He thinks about how he’s always known, despite Logan’s ass-hattery, that he loves her. Only now he has nothing left to love but a corpse.  
  
It’s tragic.  
  
Kendall won’t let it stand.  
  
But first he needs to allay James’s fears, and he thinks he knows how to do that.  
  
He says, “You can sing for Gustavo,” hating how empty his voice sounds.  
  
James starts. “What?”  
  
“You can sing for Gustavo. That’s why I met with Camille this morning. She forged a paper claiming you were let into the city explicitly for the radio.”  
  
Kendall found it tucked into one of the bricks outside their apartment when they came back from the bar. He didn’t have to open the envelope to know what was inside; Camille’s curlicue writing was heartbreakingly familiar.  
  
James says, “Gustavo’s met me before.”  
  
“I know. That’s why you’re going to have to wear a disguise.” He smiles mirthlessly. “I was going to take you tomorrow. I still can, if you want.”  
  
Shoulders slumping, James says softly, “It can wait. All of that…it can wait.”  
  
Kendall breathes the scent of him, grazing his fingers against the side of James’s face, careful not to scratch him with blunt nails.  
James leans into his touch, sighing like nothing has ever felt so good in his entire life. He says, “Kendall? Do you blame me?”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“What Dak said. What we are?”  
  
Kendall bristles. “Never.”  
  
“Stop. Think about it. If it wasn’t for us, Camille might be-“  
  
“Dak Zevon,” he spits, “Doesn’t even know there is an us. He’s a drunk and a monster, and he didn’t need a reason to do –“ Kendall’s  
voice breaks. “To do what he did.”  
  
James watches him, too careful, too gentle. He says, “Still. Do you blame me?”  
  
“No,” Kendall says. Then, “Yes. I know I shouldn’t love you, so why do I keep doing it?”  
  
For the umpteenth time that night, James looks close to tears, but still, he doesn’t cry. Maybe it’s the hard splat of water against their living room window that distracts him from it, or maybe it’s simply the fact that he is stronger and braver than Kendall has ever been.  
  
Raindrops glitter against the window, and James goes to it, gorgeous, exposed, still. Kendall follows him up from the couch and wraps his arms around James’s back. If what Kendall said hurt, then James is trying too nobly to understand, he knows.  
  
“Hey,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”  
  
James turns to face him, the ghost of a smirk curving his lips. His face is cloaked in the shadows of the slowly approaching gray dawn.  
He looks handsome. He looks dangerous. “It’s not your fault.”  
  
“What are you looking at?”  
  
Kendall glances out the window, and all he sees is a solid wall of blue, all aglow, run through with the occasional streak of slate gray.  
  
“You can see it if you squint,” James explains, so Kendall does, and sure enough, those streaks are moving overhead so quickly that Kendall can barely keep track of one before another has supplanted it. Clouds, quicker than the tide, turning from black to gray.  
  
“You do this a lot? Watch the sky?”  
  
James shrugs. “I watch a lot of things. I watch you.” He winces. “Oh, that sounds creepy.”  
  
Kendall cracks a grin, laughter like tangible delight moving his lips before he remembers that he never wants to laugh again. “Kind of. But it’s nice to hear.”  
  
Seriously, James says, “If we go to sleep, will you still be here in the morning?”  
  
“Of course,” Kendall lies. He touches James’s face again, brushes his lips against the corner of his mouth, pressing their bodies together.  
  
“Kendall, please,” James says, catching his lips in a hot, wild kiss. “Don’t do anything stupid.”  
  
Kendall shrugs, faking a grin. He feels unhinged, lost, like he’s drowning. He won’t let any of that touch James.  
  
“It’s like you said. Something stupid is my middle name.”  
  
James laughs, short and hurt. He says, “I hope not.”

 

\---

  
After disentangling himself from James’s long limbs in the overcast light of a coming dawn, he makes his way to the wall, past street vagrants and squatters, Jo’s flock in their brown robes and a patrol of Hawk’s men. His footsteps thud against the cracked, wet pavement, which turns to tightly packed mud the closer he gets to the Wall; the stench of the refugees is overwhelming here, like sulfur and human waste.  
  
According to the stories, it gets worse out there with every passing day.  
  
Kendall isn’t sure what he plans to do once he mounts the Wall and reaches Dak’s posting. He’s got a vision of Dak, with his spiky brown hair, hard eyes, and flashy insignia engraved in his mind’s eye, and hate pulses inside of him every time he thinks upon it.  
  
He does not know if he is capable of killing. But he can hear Camille’s laugh echoing in the air, and he thinks that he must be, for her.  
  
His entire body is made of pain.  
  
Quietly, dressed in a black shirt and tight jeans, soaked through with the rain reaped from those passing clouds, he picks his way through town. The shadows of early morning are stretching longer and longer, the sun about to touch the horizon, but everything is muted and dark.  
  
Verona is painted in chiaroscuro colors.  
  
Kendall doesn’t have to climb to the brick alcoves at the very tippy top of the Wall, where the soldiers hide from the storms when they’re not taunting those who entreaty for entrance to Verona’s gates. Instead Kendall finds him sulking on the stairs nearest the point of ingress, playing listlessly with his old pistol. The span of chain link stretched out in front of him is empty, the refs, for the most part, tucked safely away in hastily thrown together tents, poor shelters that at the very least block Kendall and Dak from view.  
  
Dak’s got the look of someone who has been reprimanded over and over again, nursing a black eye and a hangover on top of his boss’s displeasure. Camille was one of Hawk’s top soldiers; if Dak got reamed out, Kendall wouldn’t be surprised, but he won’t waste pity on this piece of filth murderer.  
  
Kendall takes a deep, gasping breath. Then another. And again.  
  
He thinks of James.  
  
He thinks of Camille.  
  
He draws his gun. “Zevon!”  
  
“Oh look. It’s Roberts’ girlfriend,” Dak says without any sting. He climbs to his feet with the creaky, slow movements of an old man.  
“Come to avenge her, I suppose?”  
  
“A fair fight,” Kendall agrees. “Have you heard of those?”  
  
“Roberts got what she deserved,” Dak says. He fumbles his gun out of his belt, and Kendall realizes he’s still drunk.  
  
It pauses his hand.  
  
But only for a moment.  
  
Dak says, “What’s the matter, you fucking faggot? Too much of a coward?”  
  
The barrel of his revolver is the only thing Kendall can concentrate on, and he walks into it, presses the gun straight against his forehead and ignores the way that Dak’s hand trembles. “Am I? Am I a coward, Dak? Fucking am I?”  
  
There’s something in Kendall’s eyes that he can see, reflected back in Dak’s. It’s psychosis, pure crazy, this grief for Camille that is  
manifested in the worst, most terrifying way. He feels like he has nothing to lose, like the rest of the world is very, very far away.  
  
“The hell is wrong with you, man?” Dak demands, backing away. His finger twitches on the trigger of his gun, but he doesn’t pull it.  
  
Kendall does. He aims without thinking, shooting straight and true. The Virgen de Guadalupe watches with sad eyes, staring out from the grip at angles as rain rolls like tears down her face. The recoil shakes his grip, but he’s practiced with this gun since he stole it off a dead man, and it is a familiar kind of whiplash.  
  
One, two, three nine millimeter bullets arc through Dak’s chest. His finger never once moves on his own trigger; even as his body jerks away. He’s a puppet with his strings cut, falling to his knees in the mud.  
  
There’s light in his eyes.  
  
Then there isn’t.  
  
And just like that, Kendall is a killer.  
  
He breathes the misty rain, the splattered mud, and the stench of the refugee camps. He breathes, and he breathes, and he tries so hard to keep breathing.  
  
Dak’s body is smaller than it should be, his skin pale and flecked with mud. Both of his eyes look bruised in death, purple blue and staring sightlessly at the sky. Rain pelts down from the clouds, diluting the spreading stain of blood across his chest.  
  
The fence rattles in the wind, a tiny, dark figure curling his fingers around the metal.  
  
“Did you see-“ Kendall swallows. He gestures to Dak’s body. “Did you see who did this?” He asks of a wide-eyed child on the other side of the chain link fence.  
  
The kid says, “You did,” and that’s when Kendall knows he’s fucked.

 

\---

  
He thinks of going home, except that will be the first place that Hawk’s men look. He lurks under the pillars of the boardwalk for hours, wondering if James is trying to find him, wondering if James has heard about Dak.  
  
What will James think of him now, Kendall wonders? Will he be able to forgive this?  
  
God, he thinks. This is what it’s like to have no one to turn to.  
  
Only, there is one place. At mid-noon, Mercedes’s sliding door is squeezed tightly shut against the rain, but after a rock nearly cracks the glass, she ushers him on up with a pinched expression.  
  
She says, “Everyone is looking for you.”  
  
Her white dress sticks to her body, nearly sheer against her skin. Kendall barely notices. He says, “I figured.”  
  
“Hawk thinks you killed Dak Zevon. He thinks-” Mercedes pauses, carefully rearranging her wet skirts, a physical representation of her thoughts falling into place. “He thinks you killed Camille. That the whole thing was a setup, because you never liked Dak.”  
  
Outrage lances up Kendall’s spine, his nerve endings electrified. Mercedes watches the firestorm manifest itself on his face and continues, “The rumor mill in this place is ridiculous.”  
  
Clenching his hands into fists, Kendall falls back against the softness of Mercedes’s sheets. Her room remains a sanctuary, with sheer, billowing curtains and the sweet music of wind chimes, but the tranquility can’t cool Kendall’s head, his heart, or his frantic, thundering pulse. “I didn’t kill Camille.”  
  
“I know that. Daddy knows that.” She pauses. “Kendall, you went after Dak, didn’t you?”  
  
“Yes.” Defiantly, he demands, “Do you blame me?”  
  
Mercedes’s dark eyes are sad and sweet. “No. I hope made him suffer.”  
  
“Hawk’s going to crucify me, isn’t he?”  
  
She sighs. “I don’t know. He won’t listen. He’s got – _history_ with Daddy. The peace in this city only exists because they let each other alone. Hawk manages the Militia and Daddy manages the studios and the Council, and. Hawk won’t listen,” she repeats emphatically. “He thinks Daddy hired you for this. That he’s trying to interfere with Militia business.”  
  
“Your father’s the most powerful man in the city, can’t he-“  
  
“My father’s _one_ of the most powerful men in the city, Kendall. One of them. Those words make all the difference.” Mercedes perches beside him, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It’s the only real outward sign that she’s upset. Her face betrays nothing. “The city’s a mess. After the riot at the carnival and these violent outbreaks, the Board’s looking for someone to hang.”  
  
Kendall’s throat tightens, the spectral rope he never stops fearing a tangible whisper against his skin. He swallows, but there’s not enough air.  
  
Mercedes’s room is a deathtrap, a cage. All he wants is out.  
  
Her hand lands gently against his shoulder, the concern in her cocoa-colored eyes sincere. Kendall leans into her touch, because…because maybe it’s narcissistic and vain, but Kendall enjoys being needed. Even knowing it is wrong, knowing his heart beats for someone else, he wants her to hold him.  
  
He wants _comfort_.  
  
“Daddy’s on your side. Obviously. He’s fighting for you. But right now, all anyone knows is that Dak and Camille belonged to Hawk, and you’re his number one target.” She thumbs against his clavicle, rubbing soothing circles against skin and bone. “If you miss the noose, they are going to escort you out of this city, and you’re never going to be able to get back in. Not without a pardon from Hawk.”  
  
“You don’t think he’s going to give me one.”  
  
Mercedes chooses her words carefully, glancing around her room the way she always does when they’re discussing something serious, like she’s convinced spies are hiding behind her bureau. “He’s not the kind of man who likes to apologize. If you give him the chance to exile you…No. He won’t let you come back.”  
  
“So what do I do?”  
  
“Preempt it. Leave.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Like I said, the city’s a mess. Hawk’s tied up in strategy meetings all day. If you go before he manages to issue charges, voluntarily, chances are he’ll leave you alone. He’ll have to. And then – stay away. For a month. Maybe two. Daddy will get him to see reason. Eventually.”  
  
“Mercedes-“  
  
“I mean it, Green Eyes. Get out. Leave. I’d go with you if I could.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t give her enough credit, not nearly. He thinks it’s funny, how they’re all looking for a way to run.  
  
“You wouldn’t,” a voice says at the door. “Not my baby girl.”  
  
“Sir!” Kendall bounds up off the bed, springing to his feet. “You’re here.”  
  
“I live here,” Griffin allows. He’s wearing a black robe and the fuzziest slippers Kendall has seen since before the decline of the human race. “My daughter is telling you our plans?”  
  
“Your-“ Kendall glances between him and Mercedes. “You helped think this up?”  
  
“Anything for my future son-in-law,” Griffin says icily. He looks less enamored of Kendall than he’s ever seen. “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble. I don’t love trouble.”  
  
“I know. Sir. I’m sorry, I didn’t – but.” He stops himself from making excuses, from saying that he had nothing to do with Camille’s death, or Dak’s. As much as he wanted to be responsible for the latter. “I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to leave J- my friends.”  
  
Neither Mercedes nor Griffin miss the screw up. Mercedes doesn’t mention it, though.

Griffin has no such qualms. “You’re too close to those boys. Some distance will do you good.”  
  
“Sir-“  
  
His eyes narrow. “You are engaged to my daughter. You’re here through the grace of my will. You’d argue that?”  
  
Kendall’s head falls. “No.”  
  
“You will leave within the hour, for one of my properties outside of Verona. You will not return until you are called for.”  
  
“The hour-“ Kendall protests. “I need to get my stuff. I need to say goodbye-“  
  
“You will do no such thing.”  
  
“Respectfully, sir,” Kendall says, his voice growing harder and louder. He blinks and sees Dak’s blood, and James’s face, and hears Camille’s laughter. “Respectfully. You don’t have a say in that.”  
  
Griffin’s gaze grows colder still. He says, “One hour.”  
  
“One hour,” Kendall agrees, knowing all the while that James will never, ever let him go.


	11. Had A Dream That You Were Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James squeezes his hands again, electricity dancing between them, and oh. How many cultures use their hands to dance, to sing, to love the way that Kendall wants to every time James is near? He thinks what exists between the two of them is the ideal, the thing that is behind every ballad and poem ever penned.
> 
> James is his ever fixed mark.

Sea foam squishes under Kendall’s boots.

He watches as James traces the letters of Kendall’s name over and over again in the sand, etching them deep and bold with the stick. But every time a wave rolls in, the whole thing dissolves, like it never even existed.

“That’s okay,” James jokes. “It’s still written here.”

He taps his chest and the gesture’s so completely corny that it shouldn’t have the power to make Kendall’s breath catch in his throat.

“You’re mad,” he says. The rain hasn’t let up, turning to mist as afternoon approaches. It sends visible goosebumps up James’s arms.

He replies, “I don’t know what I am. I woke up, and you were gone.”

Kendall doesn’t apologize. He knows that James has already heard what’s happened. He can probably see the blood on Kendall’s hands.

Kendall can see it himself, every time he blinks. The back of his eyelids are painted with Dak’s prone body sinking into the mud, outlined by the chain link fence and the accusing gaze of a dirty-faced child. Even though it was a clean shot, he imagines blood that never flew flecks his knuckles.

“What happened?” James asks quietly, the waves lapping at his shoes.

Kendall had returned to their crashpad at a run, ducking the sentry guarding their front door by sneaking around the back, free climbing old vines to their balcony. It was more dangerous than the time he’d scaled the gutter to get to James, but this time he was more desperate, too.

He’d found James slumped in front of the couch, watching the water make patterns across their grimy window. Logan had ushered Carlos off to the apothecary an hour before, he’d explained monotonously, staring up at Kendall with irises dull as old pennies.

Elbows propped against his knees, wrists dangling free in the air, James had looked precisely like a broken doll, disappointed in Kendall and everything they shared. They’d escaped the apartment the same way Kendall came in, barely managing not to break their necks.

Now they’re here, on the empty, wet stretch of beach, and all Kendall can think to say is, “You know what happened.”

James squeezes his eyes shut, hiding all that beautiful topaz from sight.

Kendall reaches out, stroking his fingertips against James’s face. He says, “I’m sorry.”

Catching his wrist, James asks, “Why are you apologizing to me?”

“You shouldn’t have to love a murderer.”

“That’s not what you are.”

“It is, James. I killed Dak. You know that.”

James nods, slowly. “You should have taken me with you.”

“And implicated you in this? _Never_.”

“I don’t even know what this is,” James tells him. “You killed Dak.” He pauses, like Kendall might contradict him. When he doesn’t, James mutters, “You killed Dak, and I should have been there.”

“Why?” Kendall demands. “Why would you want to have watched that? I can barely stand to think- to think that I…”

“That’s the point,” James interjects, his voice loud. They are shrouded in mist and clouds; it hangs around their shoulders like cloaks. He continues, “I never would have let you kill him, Kendall.”

Kendall opens his mouth to say – _something_. That Dak deserved to die, maybe, even though he’s not quite as solid in that conviction as he was before dawn broke.

James barrels over him, explaining, “I would have killed him for you.”

It’s not what Kendall expects to hear. “What?”

Earnestly, James says, “You’re never going to forgive yourself for shooting that fucking scumbag. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

“ _James_ -“

“No.” James grabs for his hands, squeezing them so tightly that it’s almost painful. His face is open, honest, passionate. It’s everything Kendall loves him. “You’re a good person. I’m not. I never have been. I would have killed him for you, in a second.”

“Don’t say that!” Kendall hates how his voice catches. He’s certain in this moment; no one can love James as much as he does. It’s not possible. “You are the most wonderful, most incredible person. Don’t ever doubt that. Don’t ever think I’d let you blacken your soul for me.”

James’s smile is honey slow and the sweetest thing that Kendall has ever seen. They stand there, shivering in the mist, together, their hearts beating in time. And even though Kendall knows he should feel awful; even though he does, the anchor weight of Dak’s death a kind of iron that is dragging him down…he’s okay. Right now, tasting James’s breath against his lips, he’s okay.

He hates that he has to ruin it.

“Mercedes says I have to leave Verona.”

“Leave?” James demands, his voice breaking. “Leave for where?”

“Mantua, probably. She’s not sending me out there to rot. I’m still her…” He watches the emotions play over James’s face, hurt and anger and terror. “Her fiancée.”

“I’ll go with you,” James says immediately.

“You can’t. Griffin will find out. He’ll wonder. With everything Dak was saying, we can’t risk that right now.”

Shaking his head, James protests, “He won’t know. I’ll wait a few days, and meet up with you later.”

“He’ll still find out. He’s Arthur Griffin,” Kendall answers, too unhappy to even process what’s happening. “Even if he doesn’t, what happens when I’m called back to the city? You won’t have the papers for leaving. They won’t let you back in.”

“I don’t care,” James nearly shouts, all up in his space, pressing their lips together insistently. He’s trying to convince Kendall in any way he can, and his desperation is impossible, terrible, heartbreaking in it’s intensity.

Kendall breaks away, gasping, “But I do. I’m not anything happen to you. I couldn’t take it if anything happened to you.”

James squeezes his hands again, electricity dancing between them, and oh. How many cultures use their hands to dance, to sing, to love the way that Kendall wants to every time James is near? He thinks what exists between the two of them is the ideal, the thing that is behind every ballad and poem ever penned.

James is his ever fixed mark.

Miserably, he asks, “How long do you have?”

“An hour,” Kendall admits. “Less now, since I’ve come to see you.”

“Then come on. We don’t have much time.”

\---

  
Kendall doesn’t figure out where they’re going until he sees the rainbow of graffiti splayed across the brick in front of them. The Lover’s Wall and all its proclamations of _forever_ , of soulmates and silly crushes looms at the end of the block.

“What are we doing here?”

James’s fingers haven’t left Kendall’s, interlinked, but now he squeezes them one last time. Then he lets go, pulling a can of spray paint out of his leather jacket. He trails sand behind him on the cracked asphalt as he marches right up to it, saying, “You’re not going to leave this city without ever making a mark on it. I won’t let you.”

“James, I’m going to come back.”

James turns on him with the intensity of a tempest. Kendall’s not sure what he’s going to do, but he is intensely gratified when James grabs him by the hips, nips at his neck, and gruffly spits out, “You better.” Then he straightens, like all the emotion in that last moment dissipating. “But that’s not what this is.”

Kendall thinks about the bottle of spray paint, how James had it even before he’d known that Kendall was going to leave. “You planned this.”

“You thought I was going to hate you because of what happened with Dak.”

He says it plainly, without any sort of question lingering behind it. And it’s true. Kendall had wondered if that was how his last hour in Verona was going to go.

He couldn’t imagine James abandoning him like that; he knew that James would never let their friendship, at the very least, fall to pieces. But…Kendall had also been unable to imagine that James could keep loving a monster like him. Not now.

Fiercely, James says, “Before, you called yourself a murderer. That’s not what you are. You’re Kendall. You’re mine. And I want everyone to know that.”

On top of a canvas of primary colors, across etchings in chartreuse and neon pink, James sprays an eternity sign that stretches across half the Wall. In between the loops, he inscribes their initials: KK+JD.

When he’s done, he squares his shoulders and faces Kendall, all tight leather and leonine pride and ridiculous beauty. He says, “Now you have to come back. You _have_ to, because. You and I are going to fix this place. We’re going to change it from the inside.”

“How?” Kendall laughs, a short, sharp, but delighted thing.

“I don’t know,” James breathes, the Wall blazing color behind him. “But I know that we will.”   

Kendall closes his eyes and tries to imagine it. They could rebuild the world together. He feels it so strongly, deep in his bones.

He feels James there too.

For the first time, Kendall decides that Mantua is not a death sentence. Forever, he thinks, with a kind of steadfast certainty he’s never felt before.

He and James are forever.

\---

  
They pick up Logan and Carlos at the apothecary, the freaky glass bottles lining the shelves glinting odd in the muted, watery daylight. Logan is plying Carlos with salves and gross tasting medicine, trying to make sure he doesn’t have internal bleeding.

Carlos, in turn, is trying to make sure that Logan’s alright. Rigid-backed and stern-faced, Logan looks completely fine. But his eyes are rimmed with red, and Kendall knows he feels Camille’s loss like a knife wound.

Kendall wants to stay. He wants to look after Logan’s grief-stricken heart and make sure that Carlos really isn’t going to break into pieces. There’s so much here he still has to do.

There’s just no time. A wagon is waiting for him a few blocks from the same point of ingress where he shot Dak in the heart, ready to conceal him beneath a heap of outgoing trash. Kendall needs to make that carriage; Hawk is due to be out of his meetings any second.

The news of what Kendall has done is spreading through the city, toxic, and soon enough it won’t even be safe for him to walk in the streets. Especially not if they’re spinning the story, saying that Kendall had anything to do with Camille’s murder. She was popular, and it won’t just be Hawk’s militia men who will come looking for revenge. If Hawk doesn’t get the noose around his neck first, anyway.

There’s another thing, too. Every moment Kendall stays in the apothecary implicates his friends in his potential death sentence.

He and James explain to Logan and Carlos what happened as best they can, rushed, terse sentences barely sufficient. Carlos says,  
“You can’t go.”

And Logan says, “He has to. He’ll be dead by morning if he doesn’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Carlos objects, but without any real vigor. He’s not willing to risk Kendall’s life. Not when this can all be solved by his departure from Verona, just for a little while.

“Let’s get moving,” Logan urges, gathering his things.

They follow him out into the daylight, but just as they’re moving towards the place where Kendall is set to meet Griffin’s man, James grabs him. “Wait.”

Kendall glances at up at him, this boy, the love of his life. He glances up, and then James kisses him, too tightly, too sloppy, too _publicly_.

When they break apart, panting, Kendall feels fear like ice in his veins.

“Why did you do that?” Kendall hisses into his skin. “You idiot.”

Unapologetically, James murmurs back, “I love you. I love you more than I ever thought I could.”

Logan and Carlos can hear every word.

Kendall doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he can stand the way that Logan looks like he might throw up from fear, or the piteous slant in Carlos’s stance, like he wants to hug them both. So he does the only thing he can.

He holds his head up high and tells James, “I love you too.”

And then, no matter how scared Logan is, he allows Kendall to link their arms together, James to his left, Carlos to Logan’s right. They walk the few, meager blocks standing between them and Griffin’s man, an unbreakable chain.

It’s just like it’s always been; the four of them against the world.

\---

  
Mantua is a giant fucking vegetable garden in the middle of the desert.  
  
A really boring vegetable garden. Kendall sets up shop on Griffin’s property, which is little more than a rusted out trailer on a broad stretch of barren land bordering a produce farm that he also owns. There are leafy greens for miles.  
  
Neighbors are few and far between. News of Verona is sparser still.  
  
The sun bakes everything through and through, including Kendall’s brain. He feels like he’s living in a toaster. Which reminds him of how much he misses toast. And blackberry jam. And electricity, and indoor plumbing.  
  
He has a lot of grievances, is the point.  
  
Kendall spends most of his time directing migrant workers around Griffin’s fields, where the air smells like strawberries and kale. Then, in the evenings, he watches the sunlight recede into the dusty, dry land, of which the moon and his trailer are the only occupants. It’s a lonely existence.  
  
He misses the crash of the waves. He misses his friends. He misses _James_.  
  
Kendall has never been away from his friends like this before. Not even when they were kids, and his mom was still around. He, Logan, Carlos, and James have always, always coexisted. Learning how to be alone, well, it isn’t something he’s enjoying very much.  
  
He wonders how Logan and Carlos are handling the idea of him and James together. Logan has never had a solid handle on his fear, and in the wake of Camille's death, he's probably going off the rails. He remembers the fear in Logan's eyes, after that kiss. Kendall hopes James and Carlos can handle him. Kendall hopes that Logan's not trying to ship James off to a convent.  
  
He has nightmares about that. About James locked up behind stone walls, or worse. About walking down an aisle lit with electric blue and candles, the flicker of fire illuminating James's waxy face. It turns to Dak's, and then back again. The two of them are sides of a coin that flips, flips, flips.  
  
Kendall wakes up gasping for breath.  
  
There’s a repurposed payphone in the field’s overseer office. Mercedes calls him twice.  
  
Right before he’d fled her place, he’d pecked her twice on the lips and swallowed down the bile-taste of guilt. He thinks about that while she tells him what’s going on back home; about the story of a woman hung in the public square, her body left limply swinging for weeks. The rot, she says, nearly beat out the corpses mummification by brine and wind and sunlight.  
  
“It was so gross,” Mercedes squeals, “Her skin was practically melting off. There were blow flies everywhere.”  
  
“They’re death’s best friends,” Kendall quips, even though he mostly just feels sick. “What did she do?”  
  
“A neighbor accused her of giving illegal abortions.” Mercedes pauses, her girly, spoiled tone dropping off. With some regret, she says, “There was no evidence. Only a scalpel. Which, whatever. She was one of Verona’s only doctors.”  
  
Of course. More and more, lately, it’s felt like the Reproductive Initiative is on a witch hunt, executing people for wearing red ribbons. If they care so much about life, Kendall wonders why they keep taking it.  
  
The less than savory elements of the city thrive off the chaos, using the Initiative’s lead to justify their sexual violence and murder.  
Kendall thinks about how many criminals get off scot-free because they were just trying to _fuck the queer out of her_ , or a _dead fag is better than none_.  
  
He wants to tell Mercedes as much, but her dad’s got the Initiative’s ear, and he’s not entirely sure how she’d handle his rebellious thoughts. And he has oh so many. In fact, in the absence of his best friends’ noise, all he can do is think.  
  
The riots that had broken out after Camille’s death were opportunistic and quick, injuring Carlos in the crossfire, but getting quelled much too easily. That doesn’t mean they’re over. Lately, it’s felt like Verona boasts a new riot every week. There’s too much unrest in the city. It’s like a kettle, boiling over.  
  
This is exactly what Jo was talking about when she urged him to be a part of her revolution. People are sick of watching others hang in the streets. They’re sick of letting good women and men, like Camille, die, while the perpetrators go unpunished.  
  
Kendall almost wishes he’d taken Jo up on her offer. He would have retreated into the shadows of her church, disappeared off Verona’s grid. His engagement to Mercedes would have become a thing of the past. He’d have been better able to protect Carlos, Logan, and James. Life would have been less complicated.  
  
And more.  
  
After Mercedes hangs up, Kendall emerges from the office into a field bathed in dusky like. Gnats buzz through the thickening air, clouds gathering too low to the ground. He glares up at the night sky, threaded with stars that peek through the cumulus.  
  
He thinks about the Lover’s Wall, his initials laid out bare, right next to James’s. He wishes they had a phone at their apartment. They’d need a special license to get one, and electricity to operate it, and for that they’d have to start paying rent, but. Then James would be right there, on the other end of a line. A word away.  
  
Kendall wants to go home.  
  
More than anything else in the entire world, he wants to go _home_.


	12. I'll Say Grace For Where You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is okay.
> 
> Carlos is okay.
> 
> Logan’s okay.
> 
> They have to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH(S). I'M A BAD PERSON. I KNOW. Relatedly, there's another chapter after this, so you know, don't lose hope, etc.

Kendall’s been in Mantua for over a month, loneliness a constant pulse in his bones.  
  
Then it happens. He hears James’s voice, like a dream, floating from the wireless radio on a Wednesday. It’s so unexpected, so incredibly welcome, that Kendall stops in his steps. He lets the sound wash over him, sweet and loud, the words familiar from quiet, candlelight nights splayed across the threadbare sofa back home, Logan performing cutting board alchemy, Carlos practicing his dance moves, and James the backtrack for it all.  
  
James, who has written a million, billion songs since Kendall first met him, each leaving his lips like a secret spilling into the world.

James, who deserves to live his dream more than anyone else.  
  
Kendall wonders what disguise James wore to get past Gustavo. He wonders if there were hijinks involved. There had to be hijinks involved, but the idea of them going forward without Kendall hurts. Maybe there were no hijinks. Had James walked in there with his forged signing license in hand and demanded to be put on the air?  
  
The strawberry fields are covered with low hanging, evaporating mist. Through it, the sun is breaking the world into spot-lit pieces, a gorgeous, brilliant thing. Smiling to himself, Kendall hums along to the radio, harmonizing with James’s voice without even trying.  
  
He doesn’t know it, but that moment, that song, is the last time he’ll ever feel at peace.

 

\---

  
The dream that haunts him, electric crosses vibrant blue, the corpse flesh of a face that is both dear and loathed, wakes him before the dawn. Kendall’s heart is throbbing in his chest, beating against his rib cage so hard it feels like it might break free. He gasps for breath, James’s name on his lips. He dreads climbing out from under his threadbare blanket, and he doesn’t know why.  
  
For moments on end, Kendall stares up at the tin roof of his trailer, the heat of early morning already beginning to bake through. He breathes through his nose, trying to calm down. It doesn’t work.  
  
With a sigh, he heaves himself up from the thin futon, his back aching, his knees popping. Kendall’s getting old, he thinks, or maybe depression is just making him exhausted. Either way, his body’s rebelling, and he hates it. He pulls on a pair of jeans, hands fumbling over his belt. His dumb Hawaiian shirt and a dark hoodie follow suit, but the shakiness in his fingers still belies how much the dream freaked him out.  
  
That feeling sticks with him, too, all the way across the barren, dusty stretch of land, the entire walk to the fields burgeoning green and fragrant. He beats most of the workers there, although a head or two bobs amongst the leaves. Griffin would be so proud.  
  
Kendall immerses himself in the fields, talking to the trickle of people he finds, helping where he can. The earthen scent of the farmlands is still a foreign thing, a kind of paradise compared to the world outside the protected sanctuary of Mantua, of course, but unfamiliar all the same. The ocean is so far away.  
  
He’s caught up in remembering what the waves sound like as they roll into shore when he realizes there’s another noise splitting the air.  
  
The phone in the overseer’s office if ringing, shrill and sharp. It rings, and rings, and rings endlessly, until Kendall can’t help but march up the rickety wooden stairs, each creaking unhappily under his sneakers. He’s not expecting anyone, he thinks. Mercedes isn’t due to call for another week. That same dread from earlier pools in his belly. He swallows and keeps going.  
  
The overseer’s office is one of those temporary jobs, four walls slapped together and a card table as a desk. The phone’s an old rotary, black handled and burnished with age. It makes the table vibrate with each angry ring.  
  
Hesitantly, although he doesn’t know why he’s hesitating at all – it’s probably Griffin – Kendall picks it up.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
All that fills the line is the soft pant of someone else’s breath.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
He doesn’t expect the only voice in the entire world that he actually wants to hear. “Kendall?’  
  
“ _James_.”  
  
A thread of stunned silence stretches between them.  
  
Then:  
  
“Something’s happened,” James says, short and panicked. “Kendall, something really bad has happened. Carlos-“  
  
He breaks off in a sob, and Kendall doesn’t know what to do, what to say, his throat constricting with fear. It tastes sharp and metallic, coating his tongue. He can barely hear himself as he stutters out, “I-is Carlos okay?”  
  
“No. Nononono, Carlos is. Kendall, Carlos is-“  
  
“What?”  
  
James’s breath shatters, splinters in a way that hurts Kendall’s ears. He’s never heard him sound so ragged, so wrecked. Kendall urges, “James.”  
  
“I _can’t_. You have to leave Mantua,” he says in a rush, and then there’s a noise, another voice, something like a shout. James yells, “Get out. Kendall, you have to get out!” But Kendall can’t hear the rest of what he’s saying because the phone flatlines, leaving him with a long stretch of dial tone and James’s warning echoing in his ears.  
  
The way his voice pitched up, the edge on his words…It sounded like he was in pain.  
  
Something hot and sharp twists in his stomach. His mouth tastes dry.  
  
Someone is hurting James.

 

\---

  
He walks until he can’t anymore. The oxygen outside Mantua tastes thinner, ashier. His kicks stir up dust that sticks to the ankles of his skinny jeans. Kendall’s got a map he swiped off one of the migrants in the field, faded and speckled, white lines creasing the aged paper like the strange, wrinkled veins of a flower petal.  
  
When he finally collapses, he’s got no idea where is, except that the clouds are blazing like they’re on fire. Kendall wonders if maybe they are. His throat is as dry as the dirt road, drought-parched and empty.  
  
Carlos is okay. James is okay. Logan’s okay, Kendall thinks, a constant mantra, a drumbeat in his head. He remembers Carlos the last time he saw him, blue wig askew, tight leather skirt, bare chested, bleeding internally. He remembers Carlos as a kid, helmet securely on top of his head, skateboarding into a slapdash pile of cardboard boxes that he called the dragon’s lair.  
  
They’re Kendall’s brothers. All of them, even James, weird incestuous connotations and all. They kept him going when his mother and Katie faded into memory. They kept him breathing when all he wanted to do was die. If anything happens to them, to any of them, Kendall doesn’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t know if going on after that will even be an option.  
  
He thinks about Logan, the way he wrapped himself around the base of that cactus in Nevada, the blood between his lips and how very frail he looked.  
  
He thinks about James, naked and bathed in starlight. Then, in flashes, the James of his dreams, pale, lifeless. James with a black eye after a bar fight at L’Amour. James’s body pressed against his as they danced around Griffin’s ballroom.  
  
James is okay.  
  
Carlos is okay.  
  
Logan’s okay.  
  
They have to be.

 

 

\---

  
He knows the unrest around what he did to Dak hasn’t died down enough for him to return, but he still hops a produce wagon to Verona about thirty miles outside of town. Kendall’s got his transit papers, carefully penned by Griffin. His return date was left blank, the paper already well worn, yellowing with age and abuse at the corners. Kendall smooths his thumb along the wrinkled surface of Griffin’s signature. Home is an ache in his heart.  
  
They get through the gates without a hitch; Hawk’s militia only performs a precursory check of the cart, and their papers, the solider on duty skimming over the cursive of Kendall’s name. It helps that they’re one in a line of hundreds, bustling to get inside Verona’s towering walls.  
  
The familiar fortress swallows them in darkness before they emerge back into a misty noon. Kendall hops off the wagon with a grateful nod, keeping his head down and his hood up as he dissolves into the fog. He sticks to alleyways until he can’t anymore. The apothecary is closed up tight, his crashpad has guards blocking the passage, and Carlos’s club is dark in the light of day.  
  
Damning the guards, Kendall takes the back way towards his place. He sneaks into the apartment as skillfully as he can manage, but the risk is for naught. It is woefully empty.  
  
He can’t find his friends.  
  
_He can’t find his friends_.  
  
Every step jolts through his frame, vibrates in his ribcage and his hipbones and his knees. The jangle of his hoodie’s zipper hitting the buckle of his belt is loud compared to the muted sound of rubber soles on concrete. Even though it’s midday, the persistent fog (just like the morning he murdered Dak in cold blood) refuses to lift.  
  
Although he’s careful to keep his head ducked into his hood, the people he meets on the street are few and far between. It’s like the whole town is on lockdown.  
  
Kendall’s not sure how he ends up where he does. Maybe it’s that he has nowhere else to go.  
  
He breaks off from slightly damp asphalt into cobblestone, the rough, weathered cracks between stones twisting at his ankles and calves and thighs. And up ahead, where he expects the long beam of timber, the looming skeleton of it in all its neck breaking glory, there is something new. Town square is no longer where the Gallows lives, singular. It’s where a whole row of them exist, proper platforms and frayed rope, and more bodies hanging in a row than Kendall has ever seen.  
  
Mercedes told him about the doctor they hung in the square a few weeks back, but she had mentioned nothing of this scale. Kendall stares. He rocks back and forth on his toes, his nerves from this morning magnified to ridiculous proportions. He whispers, “Red ribbons and witch hunts.”  
  
The bodies sway in the wind, creaking wood and the hush of death the only thing heralding their presence. They vary aesthetically, in levels of gruesomeness. Some of the men’s necks are twisted at unnatural angles, skin red-purple from internal bleeding that is long since staunched. Some rest their chins sweetly against their chests, an illusion of sleep ruined only by the azure tint of their lips. The smell is awful, decay that grows stronger and weakens with the direction of the wind.  
  
Kendall recognizes one or two of them in a vague, distant way. He registers their familiar faces with weary acceptance, disconnected, numb. No one should ever acclimate to violence, not ever, but it’s been thrown in his face for so long, so much, that he can’t help the desensitization that has settled over him.  
  
The corpses sway in their eternal rest, buffeted by the sluggish breeze, too exhausted to move the dead or the mist very far or very fast. The creak of the ropes is punctuated by the scurrying feet of rats, the rustle of pigeon feathers, the buzz of flies. The mist-turned-rain wraps him in a choking hug.  
  
Kendall watches the skirts some of the men wear, sequined or ruffled or sewn of taffeta, flicking and swishing against unshaved thighs. There must be fifteen in all, a long row of silenced laughter and glazed, milky eyes. Something about their dress, the skirts mixed in with jeans, half carefully styled like women, half still in street clothes that sets off alarms in his head, cutting through the haze, but he can’t place why.  
  
Then he sees it. Cerulean blue flutters against limestone, fluttering feather-soft in the wind. He freezes, dread melting molasses slow against his spine. With dawning horror, Kendall places the faces he’d seen further down the line.  
  
Carlos’s coworkers. From the cabaret.  
  
All of them are, actually. Everyone in the line of bodies worked at Carlos’s club. Which means…Kendall’s gaze is pulled up, to the left, towards the flutter of blue. He takes in bloated flesh, teeth peeking from behind blue, thrush coated, dead lips. Blow flies burrow tunnels into browned skin, and a splay of black lashes peek out from under an electric blue wig.  
  
For a single instant, Kendall’s mind is static. White noise.  
  
He vomits in a secluded corner of the Square, heaving until he’s coughed up his stomach lining and more. It must be more. Because when the convulsions stop, he feels empty.  
  
Wiping his mouth, Kendall sags against filthy pane glass and brick, an empty store front. The Square is still empty but for his limp companions and their half-closed, lifeless eyes. On the phone James had said, “Carlos is-“  
  
Now, slumping to his knees, Kendall stares up at the body before him, the leather skirt, bare chest, glitter and blue wig. He quietly finishes the sentence.  
  
“Carlos is…dead.”

 

 

\---

  
In another life, only weeks before, he would have run to Camille. He would have broken down her door and demanded her help, and because she is – was – Camille, she would have given it without blinking. But now Kendall doesn’t know what to do. He can’t go to L’Amour. Lucy won’t help him; she’d probably kick his ass for even daring to come back. And he doesn’t have anyone else.  
  
His friends, his brothers, his soul mates – oh god, _Carlos_ – they’re all he’s ever needed.  
  
It’s the only excuse he has for what he does next, pounding on the front door of the Griffin house. Each knock is so hard he feels like he must be warping the wood, but all that really happens is that he breaks skin. His blood streaks the wood.  
  
A sallow faced butler appears from thin air, the barrier of the door gone. He casts Kendall a snooty look. “Yes?”  
  
“I’m looking for Mercedes,” he gasps.  
  
“Miss Griffin is out. Errands.” The man sounds bored. The butler is bored and Carlos is dead and Kendall wraps his cloak of shock more tightly around himself, because he can’t afford to lose it quite yet.  
  
“She can’t be out. She needs – I need to talk to her!”  
  
Staring down his nose at Kendall, the man asks, “Would you like to wait?”  
  
Kendall opens his mouth to say yes, fuck, obviously he’s going to wait for his fucking fiancée when a cold voice interrupts, “That won’t be necessary.”  
  
It’s Griffin. He’s wearing a red suit with a black shirt, fresh off a meeting or something civilized, something separate from the horror that Kendall’s just born witness to. Maybe it’s that contrast that shakes him free of his shell shock. “I don’t know where my friends are. I don’t know where Logan is, or _James_. I need to find James.”  
  
He knows he sounds hysterical. He is hysterical. He can’t help it.  
  
Griffin stares at him with something akin to distaste – but with absolutely zero surprise – before opening the door more widely, beckoning him inside.  
  
There is something surreal about being ushered into Griffin’s dining room, seated at one end of a long table covered in a snow white cloth and so much shining cutlery. Griffin sits on the other side, half cast in shadows from candlelight. A servant sets out a box of cigars and a bottle of wine.  
  
Kendall stares at his full glass, but doesn’t drink anything. His throat feels like he swallowed sandpaper and crushed glass.  
  
Meanwhile, Griffin has no such problem. He lights up, taking a deep puff off the cigar. Only, he does not ask Kendall what’s happened, or what’s wrong. Instead, he says, “The human race is dying. You know that?”  
  
Kendall nods, because what else is he supposed to do? It’s the same spiel he’s been hearing for years.  
  
Griffin continues, “The plagues and the disasters, the floods and the fires, they take more of us every day. The last estimate I heard, there were less than ten thousand of us out there. Ten thousand people out of seven billion. We’re getting decimated.”  
  
Kendall crosses his arms, kicking the chair back to lean on its hind legs. He is dizzy, off-kilter. Griffin isn’t reacting the way he’d expect because of his outburst; calling up these memories of the first time fire arced in the sky over Minnesota. Kendall remembers, and he does not want to remember. He chooses not to.  
  
“What’s your point? Sir?” The words are petulant. His tone is not. If this is a game, he’s so beyond knowing how to play. A big part of him is still standing in the Town Square, watching his best friend’s body, suspended in mid-air, the thick, frayed rope choking the light from his eyes.  
  
Kendall wonders how long it took him to die.  
  
Unaware of his internal struggle, or maybe not caring, Griffin says, “Crass though it may sound, our only chance of survival is this – people like you and Mercedes, creating lives. Together.”  
  
Kendall doesn’t have a response to that. He stays quiet.  
  
He figures Griffin knows why.  
  
“I’m glad you’re back. It saves me the trouble of fetching you from Mantua.”  
  
“The wedding isn’t for months.”  
  
“I think you know perfectly well there isn’t going to be a wedding. You know, when I was a child,” Griffin pauses, taking a sip of his wine, and Kendall has trouble seeing him as a kid. It’s like he popped out of the Earth fully formed, white-haired and wrinkled, prepared to conquer it all. “There was a boy. He had the nicest blue eyes I’d ever seen…”  
  
He trails off. The silence he’s created is punctuated with the tickticktick of an ancient grandfather clock and the ragged edge of Kendall’s breath, stuttering from his lungs. Griffin finally announces, “I don’t care that you’ve taken up with a man.”  
  
There it is. The reason there was no surprise on Griffin’s face when Kendall broke down in the foyer. He already knew.  
  
Kendall croaks out, “You don’t?’  
  
“But I know plenty of people who will. You’ve humiliated my daughter. You’ve publically dishonored my name. I won’t stop the Council from killing you.”  
  
“I didn’t expect you to.”  
  
“I might kill you myself,” Griffin admits.  
  
Kendall doesn’t plan on dying before he finds James. He _refuses_ to die before he finds James, and he also refuses to think that James might be in another square, dangling off the end of a noose.  
  
Levelly, more measured than he knew he could be, he says, “I'd like to see you try.”  
  
Griffin settles back in his chair. “You cause an abundance of trouble.”  
  
“So I’ve been told,” Kendall replies, almost wry. He can’t muster up a smile, not even a self-deprecating one.  
  
“You’re my daughter’s. You belong to my daughter.”  
  
Griffin’s dark eyes search the street that runs alongside his mansion, half shrouded in hedges, pedestrians in the distance swimming in and out of the mist. Kendall pulls his hood tighter around his face, ducking his head. All the elegance of the mansion doesn’t feel like any kind of protection at all. Hell, Griffin admitted it wasn’t. He half expects a butter knife to the heart.  
  
It’s the anticipation that makes him blurt, “I’m my own.”  
  
“No. If Mercedes Griffin’s fiancée is – what you are – and making a mockery of everything this city has built, what does that mean for the city?”  
  
“I don’t follow,” he murmurs, because Kendall can’t think what he is that’s so terrible. Gay? A freak? In love? He feels dizzy and sick.  
  
Griffin shrugs. “That was the rhetoric. You know, after you left, there was glass breaking in the streets. There was blood. All because of you, and that Zevon boy, and that Roberts girl.” He is still watching the road like he can see it, welling up over his hedges. “I’ve spent a long time keeping the peace in this city. I wasn’t about to allow some upstart teenagers to ruin everything I’d built.”  
  
“The executions,” Kendall says softly.  
  
“Hawk’s favorite way to exert control. Overkill, of course. But necessary.”  
  
Kendall hates this. He hates being told and not shown. He hates that Logan and James aren’t standing in front of him, relaying this story themselves. Where _are_ they?  
  
“I saw – I saw what happened. I saw Carlos.” His voice breaks. “Cut to the chase.”  
  
“We executed everyone who worked at that smut club of your friend’s because they were quick and easy. Not a single riot since.”  
  
Griffin almost sounds proud of himself.  
  
“Where is James? Where is Logan?” The questions rip from his mouth unbidden. “What did you _do_?”  
  
“You should be proud of your lover. He hid from us for days. Even after we found out what you both were.”  
  
Kendall shoves his chair away from the table, furious. His fingers are clenched into fists, his entire frame trembling. “Where the fuck are my friends?”  
  
Griffin shrugs, too nonchalant for this entire conversation. He is a powerful man. Powerful men don’t rush. They kill as easily as they breathe. He downs the last of his wine and says, “I would recommend the church.”  
  
Kendall waits, watching to see if Griffin will try to stop him from leaving.  
  
He doesn’t. He sits there, smoking his cigar, eyeing Kendall with that same antipathy as before.  
  
Kendall asks, “Am I dismissed?”  
  
“What you do from now on is no concern of mine. Just know, you’ll never make it out of this city alive.”

 

\---

  
His heart is pounding, racing, trying to break free of his chest. He can hear it in his ears, a roar that mutes everything else; even the slap of his sneakers against the pavement turning to a dull thud. Every footstep is a heartbeat, a splash and a jolt up his spine. It’s his stomach jumping into his mouth, his ribs constricting in this almost painful way.  
  
It’s desperation, and it drives him forward.  
  
He slides against the gravel, skidding to a stop in front of the old church. He has to catch himself against a wall to keep from crashing over the steps, and his body will bruise from the impact, but he doesn’t care.  
  
Someone else does. “Are you okay?”  
  
Like an angel, she’s sitting on the steps of the church, a cup of tea clutched between her pale hands. Jo’s dressed in one of those unflattering brown robes of hers, monk-like and sexless, her face whitening when she sees that it’s Kendall’s apparition appearing from the mist. Her concern turned to something different and strange, she asks instead, “Why are you here?”  
  
“I live here,” Kendall says shortly, using the wall to support his weight. “Have you seen Logan, or James?”  
  
“No. You can’t be here, Kendall. I know what happened, and you can’t. Who brought you back?”  
  
“A wagon full of avocados. From Mantua,” Kendall starts, but before he can say anything else, she cuts him off.  
  
“Get in the wagon. Go back to Mantua. It’s the only way you’ll be safe,” Jo urges, her hair a wild halo of gold and flame.  
  
“I’m not leaving my friends. I’m not leaving James.”  
  
“You don’t have a choice. If you stay, you’ll die.”  
  
Kendall swallows. “You’re the one who told me. We always fight. We always have choices.”  
  
There’s something in those words that makes her back down. The fire and ferocity evaporates. Taking a deep breath, Jo admits, “Yes. We do.”  
  
“This is my choice. Where are my friends?”  
  
Jo’s dark eyes meet his, filled with so much sadness that Kendall feels like he’s swimming in it, drowning, drowning, drowning. She asks, “Why did you come back?”  
  
“James called me. He said. He said something about Carlos.” Kendall stops because he can’t find the words to continue. He feels pathetic. Lost. Helpless. He’s never been the last to know anything about his best friends. He never thought he’d be the last to know that Carlos, vibrant, alive, amazing fucking Carlos wouldn’t be vibrant or alive anymore.  
  
“Kendall.”  
  
He hates that people keep saying his name that way.  
  
She starts, “Things have been bad here.”  
  
“Things are always bad here.” But never as bad as outside. That’s the point. That’s why people give up their freedom. That’s why they flock to Verona and Mantua and towns like them. People are supposed to be _safe_ in this stupid fucking place.  
  
Jo shakes her head, adamant. “They’ve been worse. I miss Camille, you know?”  
  
Kendall knows. God, does he know.  
  
“I saw Carlos. I talked to Griffin. Jo, please. I need to find James and Logan. I need to make sure they’re okay.”  
  
Jo looks down at her hands, the teacup trembling in her lap. “I was an idiot to think I could stop any of this.”  
  
“ _Jo_?” He’s begging, pleading. He’s breaking, right there on the church steps.  
  
“Logan’s in the infirmary. We found him dumped outside your apartment. He hasn’t woken up.” She nods towards the church, adding, “James is inside-“  
  
She’s saying something else. “Kendall, there’s more. _Kendall_ -” She’s saying something else, but Kendall can’t hear it, or the shatter of the teacup she drops, because he’s launching himself up and off the steps. He pushes through the thick, splintered wooden doors of the church, bolting into the aisle where the first thing he sees is neon. Neon everywhere.  
  
It’s a line of electric blue crosses, leading into the darkness, and there is a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.  
  
His footsteps are soft, but still, they echo back at him from the heavy stone walls, and this, this is his nightmare come to life. Thick petaled white lilies and delicate Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft roses burgeon from the pews. The air smells sickly sweet, not just because of the sick in his throat, and below that is the same smell that greeted him in Town Square.  
  
His gun, beneath the fabric of his hoodie, is a lead weight. Wax drips down the side of candles, so many they might as well be fireflies, some of the wicks close to extinct.  
  
This is the part where he always wakes up, where the shiny, broad side of an open casket either startles him into the scratchy sheets of his own bed or, alternately, the whole thing turns into a night terror, Dak and James’s faces alternating in a haunting, awful dance.  
  
But this time, when he climbs the stairs that lead to the coffin, his way guided by gardenias and candlelight, James’s face stays painfully solid, present, there.  
  
He’s dressed in his leather pants, a white v-neck and the familiar jut of his collarbone beneath that jaw Kendall loves to grab when they kiss. He’s still wearing his gun holster, and his hair is a dark fan against a silken pillow. He isn’t moving.  
  
He isn’t breathing.


	13. You And I, We Were Born To Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kendall can’t breathe.
> 
> He’s trying; god, he’s trying, but he can’t. His lungs won’t work, his mouth won’t open, and he just can’t inhale. He chokes on it, tries to suck down oxygen, but everything constricts. His nose is clogged with the cloying sweetness of flowers and the sizzle-burn of those electric crosses and he can’t.
> 
> He can’t.
> 
> He can’t.

Kendall can’t breathe.

He’s trying; god, he’s trying, but he can’t. His lungs won’t work, his mouth won’t open, and he just can’t inhale. He chokes on it, tries to suck down oxygen, but everything constricts. His nose is clogged with the cloying sweetness of flowers and the sizzle-burn of those electric crosses and he can’t.

He can’t.

He can’t.

James’s name is a scream caught in his throat; a sob that he can’t quite get out.

There’s this high, keening wail echoing in his ear drums. It takes him minutes of gasping, hiccupping breaths to realize; that broken thing, that wretched noise; it’s coming from him.

“I can’t,” he gasps, and in the cold, empty church, his voice is in surround sound. “I can’t, I can’t, I _can’t_.”

James doesn’t move. James doesn’t take his hand and tell him that he _can_.

Without thinking about it, without thinking about anything other than the pale, bluish pallor of James’s lips, Kendall fumbles for his gun.

He wants to die.

He thinks about how easy it would be, to lift the gun in his hand and end all of this. He’d be…wherever the hell James is now.

Maybe they’d even be happy.

That would be amazing, Kendall thinks. To be somewhere, some nirvana, where they would never have to worry about the hellscape outside Verona, about being persecuted. About keeping secrets that tear them both into tiny, shredded pieces.

In that place, bathed in light, Kendall thinks he’d finally find peace.

He remembers James’s fingers fisted in orange-blue, the way he whispered that that moment between them was paradise, and chokes on another sob. He braces his hand with the gun against the side of James’s memorial.

He _can’t_.

He can’t _die_ , because Kendall can’t shake the notion that dead is just…dead.

If heaven exists, Kendall isn’t ready to find out. Not even if James is waiting patiently at its pearly gates.

He falls to his knees, his fingers wrapped around the coolness of what was once James’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice sounds strangled and foreign. “I’m so sorry.”

He inhales, he exhales, and then does it all over, trying his hardest to suck air into his lungs. This is how to keep living; one breath on the tail end of another, and again, and again.

Blood is roaring in his ears, and Kendall doesn’t know what to do, but he sets his gun down. He won’t end things this way. The world is beautiful, James said, and he would never forgive Kendall for giving that up.

He needs to find out what really happened. He needs to go to Logan.

All they have now is each other.

The thought makes him spiral, clutching at James like a child at their mother’s arm.

He still smells like James Diamond. His hair is clean and perfectly arranged, his stupid leather pants and sword all in place. He’s got on his favorite, filthy white v-neck tee, and he’s here, he’s perfect.

But he’s gone.

Kendall sobs, because he can. Because Logan sleeps still, and Carlos is lost, and he will never, ever hear James’s voice again.

How could any of this have happened?

They were princes, here. Favored by Arthur Griffin, protected by Camille Roberts, beloved by Mercedes, who was set to inherit the earth. One mistake, and everything tilted on its axis.

Except no, it wasn’t a mistake. Kendall mouths soft, breathy kisses against James’s cold cheek and knows with his bones that loving this boy could never have been a mistake.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

He cries for what he’s lost, and cries for what he’s sure to find; a world that is cold and empty and sunless without his best friends. He cries for longer than he should, because Kendall knows when he leaves the church, his soul will stay here, tied to James, the way it always has been.

He’ll walk the streets of Verona emptied of everything that made him real, and the world will still be cruelly beautiful. He will just have to fight so much harder to see it.

Not now.

Not yet.

Climbing up onto the pedestal next to James’s body, Kendall curls protectively around it.

He wishes and wishes, and wants, but there is no warmth. No heartbeat to meet his own. There is _nothing_ , and in the end, when Kendall whispers, “I love you,” into the back of James’s neck, all it is are words, mumbled sorrowfully in an empty church.

They resonate back at him from every angle, from every pew, his own voice amplified. For the briefest of moments, Kendall pretends that it is James.

But the pretense is a punishment, because when the reverie breaks, there is only Kendall and a corpse that used to be a boy, bespoke for him.

* * *

 

In the rectory, Kendall watches, hollow-eyed, as Jo fusses over Logan’s sleeping form. Bruises blacken the indent of his collarbone and the curvature of his cheeks. His skin is too pale, corpse-pale, and Kendall is certain there’s more, beneath Logan’s clothes, where he can’t see.

“How is he?”

“Not great.” Jo’s eyes narrow. “Hawk’s men did a number on him.”

He croaks, “What happened?” because he’s supposed to. Because Jo expects him to, and it doesn’t really matter that Kendall no longer cares. What happened is incidental; the end results are all that matter.

Knowing won’t breathe life back into James or Carlos’s chests, or wake Logan up.

Knowing won’t fix anything at all.

Jo’s dark eyes flick to the left, the right. Anywhere except on Kendall. She’s got pity written in every nook and cranny of her face.

Sadness too. Kendall’s friends were hers once.

Vaguely, he remembers that; Jo at his side, laughing in a way that he can’t imagine anymore.

Laughter in general isn’t something Kendall can picture. He’s too far beneath the waves of his own grief, numbly staring up at this girl who used to be something like the sun to him.

“Where do you want me to start?” She asks, heaving a sigh that rattles through her frame. She shifts her weight onto a chest of drawers, splintered wood and medical supplies sitting in disarray on the surface of the furniture. “You left.”

“I was gone for a-“ Kendall swallows. “For a month. How can all of this have happened in a month?”

He’s begging, pleading, asking Jo to tell him that it isn’t true.

She doesn’t contradict the ludicrous nature of what’s occurred. A single month, and two of his best friends are _dead._

He can still feel the imprint of James’s lips, red-hot against his skin.

Eyes burning, Kendall presses his palms to the sockets. He repeats, “How?” and even his voice is a specter of its former self.

Jo swallows. She’s angry and miserable, frustrated that she wasn’t able to do anything, and its written clear as day across her face. But Kendall doesn’t care about that, can’t handle her helplessness when he’s struggling with his own.

“Within days of your departure…” She tapers off, like this is the last story she ever wants to tell. Kendall stays silent, goading her into continuing, “Hawk’s men were exercising their right to investigate Dak’s murder. Everyone knew you were guilty. It’s the why of your culpability that held their interest.”

It’s his fault. Okay. That’s.

Not something he can handle, honestly, even if he’d suspected it. Griffin was so cryptic; nothing he’d said made any sense. But he knew about Kendall and James. He had to have found out somehow. And that _somehow_ probably has to do with why Logan is lying prone on this fucking slab in front of him, and maybe Kendall does want to know after all.

Maybe he wants to hear that if he hadn’t gone after Dak, everything wouldn’t have dissolved into shit. Maybe James would be standing next to him, holding his hand and telling him that everything would be okay.

He’s the one to blame for all of this. Of course he is.

Kendall’s freaking out. He knows that, intellectually, but he can’t seem to stop.

Jo must see it on his face. She reaches for him, but she aborts the movement when she sees how Kendall flinches, like a dog kicked too many times.

“Tell me,” he hisses, trying to work his way through the pain.

On the table, Logan stays too still. Too close to something resembling death.

“They took Logan and Carlos in for questioning. They tried to take James, too, I think, but you know him.” _Knew_ , Kendall’s mind corrects, even as Jo says, “He had hidey-holes all over this city. He evaded Hawk’s men like he was born to do it.”

For the sparest of moments, Kendall can almost feel pride. It evaporates as quickly as it came, chased by bile that Kendall can taste.

Logan is, by far, the weakest link among his friends. But no matter what, he wouldn’t betray the guys’ trust. Unless something horrible happened.

“The riots were already spiraling out of control.” Blanching, Jo says, “That’s my fault. At least a little bit. I used what happened to Camille, and the doctor – have you heard about that? The woman they executed?” Jo begins to chew on her lower lip, murmuring, “No. I suppose you wouldn’t have. My point is, things were bad, and Logan and Carlos? They weren’t giving Hawk’s men anything.”

She hesitates, pushing a hand through her thick blonde hair. Her eyes dart to Logan, layered with sympathy. “That’s when they came up with the idea to murder those men, from the cabaret. Carlos among them. I think…I think they could tell he was the strong one.”

Hello, something horrible.

Kendall pushes back the revulsion, the rampant realization that Carlos’s death too, is on him. Griffin implied as much, but this is confirmation from someone he trusts.

Everything that’s happened, everything that he’s lost; it’s all his fault.

“After that, Logan broke. At least, that’s what we think.” She touches Logan’s ankle, tentative, like he’s made of glass. “It wasn’t until a few after Carlos that the city-wide hunt for James began in earnest. They called him aberrant. They said that he, and you…” Jo is biting her lip raw, now. “James couldn’t hide from all of Verona. We only got his body back from Hawk’s men yesterday. Kendall, I’m so sorry.”

Kendall doesn’t answer. He touches Logan’s shoulder, scared that he’ll shatter apart under his fingertips.

Logan is the only real thing that Kendall has, anymore.

He imagines Griffin and Hawk know that.

“We’ll have to get out of the city.”

“You can’t move him yet,” Jo responds, hovering protectively over Logan’s prone form. “He’ll never make the trip. Besides, where are you going to go?”

“Somewhere new. Somewhere…I don’t know.” Kendall thinks of outside, of the monstrosities beyond the city walls, and how they compare to the monsters here, in Verona. “I have to think. I have to figure it out, and keep him safe.”

“You have to keep yourself safe, too.” This time, Jo doesn’t retract her hand when she touches him, but he barely notices it. The only thing Kendall can actually feel in the entire room is Logan’s skin under his palm. “Kendall-“

“I need some air,” he says, shaking her off. He squeezes Logan’s shoulder one more time, his other palm pushing Logan’s bangs off his forehead. Kendall doesn’t know how his best friend is going to survive this, even if he wakes up. He doesn’t know how either of them will. “I need to breathe.”

Jo takes a step back, ever-respectful.

She’s right, he thinks, that the riots were her fault. Her and her underlings, spreading those stupid pamphlets, stirring up chaos. If they hadn’t, Hawk wouldn’t have needed a catalyst to subdue the city, and…

Carlos still would have died, Kendall thinks.

Hawk would have killed him either way. The upheaval only gave him the excuse to execute all those other poor men alongside him.

Kendall knows better than to blame this on Jo.

He kisses Logan’s cheek, once, whispering, “Hang in there.”

Then, before he leaves the rectory, he hugs Jo.

Tight, like a goodbye.

* * *

 

Outside, the fog is dissipating, mid-afternoon sunlight piercing the melancholia of Verona’s still-wet streets.

Kendall doesn’t bother with the hood of his sweatshirt, some small, suicidal part of him unconcerned about whether he’ll be struck down where he stands. He presses a palm to his chest, and he can feel his heartbeat, and it is strong, and it feels nothing like broken.

He’s alive, he’s alive. James is gone, but he’s still alive. Kendall pulls air into his mouth, trying to remind himself that James would want that, would want him to live, to chase one breath after another, no matter how hard it gets.

The rain-wet scent of stone and soaked earth mingle with the green richness of mold, and distantly, wind-carried brine, jacaranda, and eucalyptus. James loved days like this; sinking his toes into the damp sand, watching the ocean spray fly as the shy sun slowly baked the world back to normal.

At the thought of the way he would smile out at the sea, Kendall’s heart constricts. He’s back there, in the church, where light will never touch James’s skin again. He’ll be buried in the bowels of the cathedral; Jo had assured him.

He’ll have a real resting place instead of being left to rot.

Like Carlos, Kendall thinks, and he has to shut that thought down as quickly as it comes.

This place, Verona, it gave and it stole. It was never a kind city, but Kendall can’t force himself to wish he’d never brought his friends here.

If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have drunk champagne on top of burnt out cars with Camille. He wouldn’t have walked through the fetid rows of herbs in Doc Hollywood’s apothecary, the only place Logan really shone.

He never would have fallen into Mercedes’s arms, and maybe, if he hadn’t, James wouldn’t have been brave enough to confess how he felt.

Of course, if Kendall had never come to Verona, so many more people would be alive.

Sea salt scratches at Kendall’s throat. He’s overwhelmed by it all, by the things he can change and the things he can’t. He doesn’t know how to do this, to live, without James and Carlos by his side.

But for Logan’s sake, and for his own, he squeezes his hands into fists, ready to try.

“You thought you were king of the world. Engaged to Mercedes Griffin, working for Rocque Records. Look at you now.” The voice carries from the bottom of the church steps, malicious and taunting.

Kendall starts.

Jett Stetson is staring balefully up at him, like Kendall personally broke every toy he had and then took away his dessert.

The blaze of his blue eyes is matched by the patchwork of sky emerging from the clouds, and Kendall never really understood what he did- other than exist - to make this guy hate him.

“Now _really_ isn’t the time,” Kendall tells him. He hopes the brushoff will work, even though he’s got a creeping suspicion that there’s a bounty on his head, and Jett knows it.

“There won’t be another, Knight.” Jett begins making his way up the steps, his movements slow and methodical. He’s a lion, stalking his prey, and he doesn’t give a damn that Kendall’s not in the mood. “This is your last stand.”

“What, you’re going to bring me to Griffin?” Kendall asks.

“I’m going to break you. Just like I did to your little friend.”

“You were there?”

“Hawk’s men let me help them work, with Mitchell,” Jett says, smugly. He’s at the plateau Kendall’s on now, mere feet away. Too proud, he continues, “I’m the one who brought your James in. I roughed him up a little first. How’s he doing now? I hear he had a little brush with the afterlife.”

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

Kendall’s shaking, furious. If Jett brought James to Hawk, that means that he’s directly responsible for the corpse in the church.

The only thing that keeps him from throwing himself at the other man is the memory of Dak’s blood on his hands, and how that started all of this.

“I’d ask you to make me, but you might take it the wrong way.”

The accusation is lascivious, the implication that Kendall would ever do anything like that with Jett _disgusting_. Icily, he replies, “Disabuse yourself from that particular delusion. You’re not my type.”

Jett’s face darkens. “When I heard you were back in Verona, I thought; surely he can’t be so stupid. I underestimated you.”

“And I overestimated you,” Kendall retorts, fueled by rage. “I figured you had a soul.”

His temper won’t stay in check long, and he can see that Jett knows it. That he’s waiting for it.

This won’t end well.

“You’re beneath me,” Jett says. “You and your friends walked around Verona like you were somehow better than the system, better than the city-“

“We were,” Kendall snarls, hatred in his bones. “We were so much better than you.”

Jett cocks an eyebrow. “Look where that got you. How is Logan, by the way? He squealed like a stuck pig. We only had to break three of his ribs.”

Kendall lunges for him then, the visceral image of Logan in pain caught in the web of his mind.

He’s going to tear Jett apart with his bare hands, or he would, if Jett didn’t draw a dagger in response. The silver tip of the thing flashes ominously, Jett waving it in a drunken zigzag through the air.

If it lands, Kendall doesn’t feel it.

“Bastard,” he grits out, the air punched from his lungs.

He stumbles back to avoid Jett’s brazen movement, trying to sight a new angle of attack. His holster weighs heavy at his arm, but when Kendall reaches for his gun, it’s gone.

He left it in the church, he numbly recalls. He left it there, the _Virgen de Guadalupe_ face-up, to guard James as he rests.

He vaguely remembers thinking that she is supposed to look out for lost causes.

Now, that’s him.

Jett swipes to the left, and Kendall stumbles over his own feet trying to dodge. His sneakers skid across the steps, losing his footing too quickly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses something white and gold.

Kendall flails his arms, a sharp pain in his side, and for the briefest of moments he thinks that maybe Jett grazed him, before he lands with an undignified _oof_.

“Look at you,” Jett says, looming over him. The knife is fisted in his hand, a thin line of ominous gray below his too-white knuckles. “Right where you belong.”

Kendall thinks of James, cold and still, inside the church. _Paradise_ , James had said, right there in Verona, in the spaces between their shared breath.

“You thought you’d made it, here,” Jett sneers, “You thought you could be something better? I’ll show you what you’ve made.”

He raises the knife high, silhouetted by the sun.

Kendall closes his eyes shut, not wanting Jett Stetson to be the last thing he ever sees. He counts his breaths, one after another, all for James, every second of it, this inexplicable tightness in his sternum-

There’s a wet thud, and then Jett falls to his knees, eye-to-eye with Kendall now, and it makes no sense at all.

Blood burbles over the cleft of his lips, and Jett says, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

He slumps to the side, a ruby-hilted knife sticking out of his back, right around where his left kidney would have been. Behind Jett, Mercedes stands, still wearing a tight, white dress, the cloth flecked with her victim’s blood.

“Good riddance,” she says, brusque and breezy. “He talked too much.”

Kendall gapes. “Where do you keep that knife?”

Mercedes shrugs. “It’s Verona. You never know when you’re going to need something sharp and pointy.”

He’d have a witty retort to that, probably, if his mind wasn’t scrambled and his blood wasn’t dripping on the church steps.

As it is, Kendall staggers to his feet, trying to make his way towards her, one step, then a second, and-

“Whoa there. You’ve looked better, Green Eyes.”

“I don’t feel- um.” Kendall falters, dropping to his knees.

Mercedes, quicksilver fast, catches him before he can concuss himself against the stone.

She’s stronger than she looks, manhandling Kendall down until his head rests in her lap. She runs her fingers over Kendall’s abdomen, searching, until she finds something that makes her expression go black. “Kendall-“

“Don’t,” he whispers, remember how he felt like Jett had punched him on that first, wild swing. “I don’t want to know.”

“It’s bad.” She shows him her fingertips, stained with blood. Her voice comes out trembling, terrified. “Kendall, it’s really-“

He shakes his head as adamantly as he can. It barely musses Mercedes’s white dress. “Where did you come from?”

“I followed him here.” Her gaze drifts to Jett, imperious, _furious_. “He was part of the team that interrogated Logan. When Daddy told him you were in the city, I knew he was going to chase you down. And he knew – we all did, that you’d be here.” More gently, she says, “I tried to stop them. I tried, and no one listened. I couldn’t get to James until- well.”

“Why didn’t you call?” Kendall chokes out. “Why didn’t you tell me they had my friends?”

“I didn’t _know_. Daddy kept it from me, right up until they began hunting James.” Mercedes’s face darkens, there in the shadow of the church steeple. “It seems like a lot of people have lied to me, lately.”

_Oh_.

Kendall asks, “Are you mad? That I wasn’t in love with you?”

“I don’t know,” Mercedes says softly, but her tone has a mocking edge, “Are you mad that I wasn’t in love with you?” Her shoulders slump as she gives into to what Kendall wants, touches his face, his clavicle, his heart. She leaves a bloody imprint on his chest, but Kendall can only see the tips of it. He refuses to look down. “We had fun. How could I ever be mad about that?”

“I don’t want you to hate me,” he says, and he’s not even sure if he’s making sense.

“I could never.” She smoothes a hand through his hair, her fingers on his scalp hothothot. Or maybe Kendall is just coldcoldcold. “I’m too young to get married. We both are.”

Kendall thinks about how he probably would have jumped headfirst into marriage if it had been the right person, if it had been-

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mercedes scolds. “My heart will go on, etcetera etcetera etcetera.”

She’s trying to distract him, he knows. Because even with the fierceness, tears are tracking freely down Mercedes’s face. She’s sniffling, now, deep, snotty breaths, and Kendall doesn’t want all that.

He doesn’t want to cause anyone grief.

He knows he can’t help that, though. He says, “Logan’s never going to forgive himself for this.”

Mercedes snorts. “Great, another reason for him to be so uptight.”

Her voice is quieter than normal, less squeaky, more serious. Kendall glances at his own blood stained hands, the mere effort to lift them exhausting. “It’s not his fault. He’s been hurt so much. He’s not as strong as he used to be.”

“Did I say anything about blaming him?”

“Can you- would you…?”

“What?” Mercedes touches Kendall’s face, tilting his gaze back towards her. “Anything, Kendall. Anything you want.”

“Take care of him. Please? For me? He’s so fragile. The world was…too much. This will break him.”

“I’ll keep him safe. I’ll protect him,” Mercedes swears.

It comforts him somehow, the idea of Mercedes and Jo, looking after Logan. They’ll keep him safe, together, because they are some of the fiercest, bravest women Kendall knows. Each in their own way, to be sure, but both made of iron, at their core.

Kendall smiles and wonders if there is blood in his teeth.

The wind gusts over the church steps, tousling Mercedes’s hair. It is a shining blonde halo. She’s an angel, Kendall’s guardian, outlined by the electric blue sky.

He says, “You’re so beautiful.”

Mercedes’s hand cradles his cheeks. She’s burning, blazing, her heat too much for him to take as all of his slips away.

She says, “So are you. So was James.”

“So was James,” Kendall agrees.

He closes his eyes, an image of James’s hair shining in the sunlight, his sweet smile flashing lightning quick through Kendall’s mind before everything fades to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this…was a thing. An ordeal of a thing. I don’t know if I achieved everything I wanted. 
> 
> In fact, I know I didn’t, because I had meta-ed the hell out of this thing before I ran off to school, talking every angle of it out with jblostfan16 and breila-rose. A lot has happened between then and now, and some of the ideas we talked about slipped into the time stream. But there is a lot that remains the same; this ending, for instance, was one of the first parts I wrote. 
> 
> I know that Verona lacks some things, like extensive world-building. And that’s not laziness on my part; it’s more that creating a unique world wasn’t what this exercise was about. You want to see the world, watch William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet. You’ll see the giant L’Amour sign, the Hawaiian shirts and pearl-handled guns. Pretend it’s all a little more ragged, and you’ve got what I envision the dystopian Verona to be. It's all there. 
> 
> What this story was and hopefully _is_ about is this one boy at the center of the city; how and who he loves. We all have stories like that, and some of them end just as badly as this, but. They're still worth telling, and living. 
> 
> The world is beautiful and terrible. Don't be afraid. Just breathe it in. <3


End file.
